The Parx dirt racing surface was yielding some crazy slow times starting with September 11th.
The variants for the dirt routes on certain days were like +11 and +13 -- where a track like Emerald Downs consistently has dirt route variants in the MINUS mid-to-high 20's.
Look at this chart:
http://www1.drf.com/drfPDFChartRaces...=20120911&RN=1
8f race of Sept 11th at Parx:
26.09 first quarter -- 51.89 half mile -- and the final quarter mile of this 8-furlong race was run in 26.22 ... it's like they were carrying buggy's around for the whole race.
These were older N4L $7,500 claiming females -- and two of them including the winner were claimed out of the race -- not exactly a bunch of PA Bred bums in a maiden claiming race.
Worst of all -- a 3/1 shot who was loose on the early lead in that race faded to finish 4th and the 2nd and 3rd place finishers came from last and next to last at odds of 7/2 and 9/1.
Look at Emerald Downs on September 9th -- $7,500 N2L (instead of N4L) for 3yo females (instead of 3yo and up females) -- it's obviously a clear-cut weaker class of race at the same distance of a mile ...
http://www1.drf.com/drfPDFChartRaces...=20120909&RN=2
And you see fractions posted of 22 3/5 and 45 3/5 by the obviously cheaper level variety of $7,500 females going a mile.