The following is an interview Charlie Moran did with Jerry Porcelli, track superintendent at NYRA, a slightly edited version of which appeared this weekend at saratogaspecial.com. It should be of interest to those who wonder why running times are not dramatically faster than they were 20 years ago, and those who wonder why a track would change speed over the course of a day (contrary to dogmatic statements Ragozin made in his book, and Friedman has made on their website).



CHARLES: Please describe your duties during the course of the day

JERRY:I get here at 6:30 in the morning. I take a look at the turf courses. Come up with the conditions. I walk both courses early in the morning; see how were doing with water and if the course needs to be cut. The turf is always the first thing we look at. We need to see if its going to need water during the day. Should we cut it? Is there a fungus growing? Is there something that I need to report to my foreman and my crew in the infield. Also, I look at the dirt track. Hopefully, they put enough water on it when we left the night before. Then I kind of walk through where the trainers congregate and see if there are any complaints or questions about the weather. I get a fax on the weather at 6:30 in the morning. People are looking at the weather all the time because of training and racing schedules.

Then I get together with my track foreman and we talk over what we need to do for the day. We look at how much grading we need to do on the track because we have a track measurement sheet from the day before. I kind of just lay out work for them; tell them what I want them to do with the training track. We talk over what we might do on upcoming dark days, in terms of special projects. Then I bounce back up here for the rest of the morning usually to work on paperwork and purchasing. Right now on the table over there I’ve got track elevation sheets. We had a surveyor in there. He was at Saratoga in June and he took elevations on the base of the track and then plotted them on the base of a sheet to see if the base is holding up. We might need to do base work for the fall. There is always something to do.

Then I’m up here for the rest of the afternoon, running the show as far as how much water we need, and making sure the men are doing what they’re supposed to be doing and that the guys in the infield are in the right place for whatever race is to be run.

CHARLES: Can you describe the different composition of the NYRA tracks?

JERRY: Starting with Aqueduct, we got the winter and main track with two different bases. The main track is a clay base. The winter track is limestone screens. The cushions are all pretty much the same. The main track cushion has a little more silt and clay in it. The winter track is a little sandier because it will freeze and thaw. The Belmont main track is similar to the Aqueduct main track; it’s a clay base, as is the Saratoga main track. We try to make them as close to the same as we can. Saratoga is a little different because the soil that you get two thousand miles away is a little finer. The sands on the Long Island are a bit coarser than upstate. So there may be a bit of a difference in the gradation of the sands, but we shoot for the same combinations of sand silt and clay.

CHARLES: How has the composition changed over the years?

JERRY: That’s a good question. Over the last fifteen years, I’d say that all NYRA tracks have become sandier. I would think that all tracks on the east coast have become sandier. I think that’s mainly because people don’t want to run on wet tracks. They’d like the tracks to dry out quicker. Its a bit of a double-edged sword. You give away a little more of a bounce and a little darker color by taking some of the clay and silt out of it , but you’re also going to dry out quicker. At Saratoga, years ago in the eighties, if you got a wet track, it might be wet for three days. Now, if you get some sun and wind you could be dry in a day.

CHARLES: Do you do anything different here in terms of maintenance than at other circuits?

JERRRY: I watch what other tracks do. I’ve been on a lot of road trips. I enjoy seeing what Churchill, Pimlico and Laurel do. In fact, I took vacation down there for a couple of days and visited. You pick up things, but everybody does something a little differently. A lot depends on the soil that you have and the way you run the job. Churchill is just a different sand than we have. They are constantly compacting it and rolling it. And they use maybe a six inch cushion, whereas we use only a four inch cushion.

CHARLES: Is there any rule of thumb that you use to determine when you take races off the turf?

JERRY: It’s a tough call. A lot depends on the condition of the course at the time. The fresher the course, you can take more rain and run on it. If you’ve run on it a lot early in the meet and its more beaten up than you might not be able to run in the wet going. But then again when you’re at the end of the meet you figure you’re at the end of the meet and you don’t have to protect it that much. Generally, you say, You say is it safe for the horses to run on? There is no rule of thumb. It’s often a gut feeling and involves a lot of experience.

CHARLES: What type of input do the trainers give you?

JERRY: They always have something to say. But a lot of them, well, you never hear a word from them. They just say hello. But some will say, for instance, You know its a little dry this morning? What happened to the water truck?

Its funny. For example, the other day somebody on the training track said, Did you guys just do something to this training track recently? And I said, Yeah when we’ve had a break in the weather we’ve put more dirt on it because all the rain washed it into the ditch and you lose some. He said, It’s fantastic; I love it. Then a trainers assistant said, I’ve got to tell you something. This training track is horrible. I said, “What do you mean horrible? What happened?” She said, “The backstretch yesterday by the half mile pole was ruddy and kind of wetter there. It was a mess. “

And then the first guy caught wind of this and said, “When was this?” And she said, “Yesterday.” He said, “Well, I was on the track yesterday on a pony and I thought it was great. So, I left the two of them and walked off. “

Its a personal thing. Some people love it when others hate it. Some people hate it when we float it all the time when its wet and I have to explain why we do it.

Two years ago, I remember the track was pretty wet one morning, but it was marginal if we could harrow it or just float it. So I decided to harrow it because so many of them don’t like to work their horses over a floated track. And then Bill Mott, whom I respect very much-he never says anything, came riding up and said you’re not going to harrow this are you? And I said, “Yeah, well I thought it was harrowable.” He said, “Just leave it like this. It’s flat. It’s level.” I said, “Sorry Bill, you’re in the minority today, were going to harrow it.”

CHARLES: Do you look at biases during the course of the day?

JERRY: One of the things we look at every day is the depth of the cushion. When you’re harrowing nine or ten times day, the material has a tendency to want to move down even when its not raining. We track that every single day. As you can see, we’ve got a track measurement sheet here. We go out grading every day. We have a guy walk behind us with a stick and as were grading, he’s measuring. If we hit a spot that is a little too deep, hell tell us to bring it down or take it back up. We really manicure the track every day. Belmont’s a big track and its tough to do, but were looking for consistency. As you can see, on this sheet, we were a little light this day on the backstretch; so I had them run some loads in there and we got it back up. And obviously, Ill watch the races closely.

CHARLES: Is there anything you do about the traditional Aqueduct rail preference and the Belmont historically favoring wider moves? Is there any explanation for that?

JERRY: Well, sometimes its built into the geometry of the track and the actual tightness of the turns. Lets face it, these turns are so wide and long , it doesn’t seem to matter if you re three off the rail or right on it.

CHARLES And the banking is the same ?

JERRY: The banking is almost exactly the same. Most of these tracks are 4% banking on the turns and just 2% on the straightaway.

CHARLES: So you still must get complaints from handicappers?

JERRY: There’s always a guy who will stop in here and say, if they’re a little slow, What’s with this half in 47 and 4 and two days a go it was 45 and 4? But a lot has to do with humidity, dew point, the amount of water in the track and coming out of the track. When you come out of rainy days, especially days of rain like we had in May and June, you’re usually quicker than on the third or fourth day out rather than the first day because the moisture is still coming out. The moister it is the quicker they run.

CHARLES: How frequently does moisture content change within the day?

JERRY: That’s a good question. It can certainly change from the first race to the ninth. If were adding the water ourselves, we strive to have it the same for the first as it is for the ninth.

CHARLES: But how do you measure it?

JERRY: You could measure it if you went out and took moisture tests, which were not going to do after every race. It pretty much comes down to experience and what we see. I look at the times of the races and I can judge what they should be running on any given day. It can happen that as the day goes along, and it happens to get cloudy, and were putting the same amount of water in it, then shame on us. We should adjust. And we do we watch it very closely. Sometimes we need two loads in between races, depending on wind, for example, and again dew point and humidity. Sometimes I can tell just by looking at the color of it.

CHARLES: Does the changing moisture content throughout the day imply that a daily variant maybe just too simplistic?

JERRRY: I don’t know how you’re coming up with the variant in this case, but it can change from race to race almost, especially on a summer day. Its tough to keep that exact moisture content throughout the day. I get questions like that all the time. For instance, I do a lot of moisture contents in the winter because a lot of times you get material that’s kind of frozen in there. As it gets warm, the sun hits and the salt comes out of it and the moisture dries up. When its 13 degrees in the morning, it could look like its powder and has no moisture in it. So I take a sample of it and I put it in the oven and heat it up and I see all the moisture come out of it. That’s what’s going to happen at 1 o clock in the afternoon because, even though its winter time, we still have to put water on the track. But its difficult to know how much you should put in when its bone dry in the morning, or freeze dried, as we say, because the moisture is still in the sand, but its crystallized. You don’t see it. Now, you don’t want it too wet, but you want it wet enough. You can have muddy tracks, wet fast, good, but the moisture content is all up and down that scale, just like it is on a fast track. We have found at Aqueduct that during the winter that a fast track can be anywhere from 3% to 12% moisture content.

CHARLES: Is this even within the course of a day?

JERRY: It could be, especially when you’re coming out of a wet track, because you might start out 15% in the morning and by the end of the day we’ve been at 7%. That’s a big drop.

CHARLES: What would that do for the same type of horse, lets say?

JERRY: It could start out being very fast--lets say 110 and 2 and end up and 112 by the end of the day, for the same type of horse. Now generally, on a fast track, when were putting water on it, I don’t think that you’d see more than a couple of fifths of a difference.

CHARLES: What do you feel are the most over rated and under rated handicapping factors?

JERRY: Well, that’s hard to say. I think that biases are little overrated. I call them jockey biases.

CHARLES: Because its self fulfilling?

JERRY: Yes, a lot of times. I have another story regarding jockeys. A couple of years ago they were staying off the rail here like it was death. And Terry Meyocks asked me to go around the jocks room and ask why they were avoiding the rail. So, I went to Jerry Bailey, and he said, It seems a little dry in there maybe you’re not getting enough water on the rail. I said, OK. Then, I said to Eddie Maple, Nobody’s going down on the rail and Bailey says it might be a little dry. Dry? I came back after that race and the owners asked me why the horse didn’t run well. I told them the horse didn’t like the mud. I thought you had it too wet.

But I often hear, trainers say, after watching a four-wide-move winner in the previous race, You know, maybe you should stay off the rail. There are times though, no doubt about it, where you’ve had days of rain and you couldn’t grade the track and some material moved down towards the rail and made it deeper. No doubt it could be a true bias.

CHARLES; Have you ever done anything unique for anyone?

JERRY: We do what we feel will be best for everybody. We try not cater to any individuals. You have to do what you feel in your heart is best for everybody and the track. Well listen to any request. Sometimes we get a little ticked off about turf requests for workouts especially when the course is soft.

CHARLES: Is there anything specific about Saratoga--maybe the Mellon as it relates to the Widener?

JERRY; Were always striving for better courses. I’ve been going up to Saratoga for eight years now and we’ve never had a really good root system when we got up there on the turf courses for whatever reason. This year we’ve been in contact with a professor from Cornell, who is the consultant for the US Open golf course and Yankee Stadium. He came up during the meet last year at Saratoga, took a look at the root structure and came up with a program that we instituted last fall. So were excited about it for this meet.

CHARLES: How would others that aren’t involved in the day to day maintenance notice the impact?

JERRY; If we run more on the grass. Its supposed to be more durable and thicker. If he’s right it will help everybody-the horsemen, the association, etc. We’re hopeful. Its been a bit of a departure from what we’ve done in the past. Judging from appearances the course looks gorgeous up there.



TGJB