Quote:
Originally Posted by Calzone Lord
When the surface of the track is very slow, the raw fractions will also be very slow.
Cheap claimers can run 21 and change at Turf Paradise because the surface is lightning fast.
Whenever you see a turf course get yielding, good horses can go 25 and change and 51 and change and easily get caught.
Like I said, the pace was a +4. That means the pace figure was 4 points faster than the final time figure.
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All that is true but the track wasn't all that slow yesterday. If you look at all the times and all the fractions yesterday at Pimlico and compare them to all the times and all the fractions of past Preakness days, the track yesterday was hardly slower than normal. You had that one route race yesterday where they went the half in :51, but there is no reason to think that was anything other than an aberration. Look at all the other route races yesterday. Look at all the sprint fractions yesterday compared to the sprint fractions last year on Preakness day at Pimlico. They were faster yesterday. If the track was so slow yesterday then why were the sprint fractions so fast and why were the final times of those sprint races faster than last year?
The Preakness fractions were ridiculously slow yesterday. If you ran those same horses there 20 times under those exact conditions, that is the slowest half you would ever see. The average half (under those exact track conditions would be somewhere around :47 2/5. That would be the average. If everyone gunned, they might go :46 2/5 or :46 3/5. If they let someone crawl alone on the lead (like yesterday), they would go :48 3/5. That would probably happen 1 time out of 20.
Beyer obviously thinks the track was very slow yesterday. He gave Oxbow a 106. I think that number is way too high but we all have different opinions.