BEYER: Poly's Anti-Speed Bias

[philcski]

I like the competitiveness of the racing on the Poly, but the jockeys are turning this into a farce. It's becoming a self-fulfilled prophecy when they run a ridiculous 1:16 to the 3/8ths pole, turning the race into a 660 yard quarter horse race. The notion that it is impossible to win on the front end is crap. In the fall, there were 136 races run on the main track, of which 13 (10%) were won wire-to-wire, including one race with the fastest fractions of the entire meet (by a 33-1 shot), and 89 were won by horses within 4 lengths of the lead at the first call (a very normal percentage.) This is a lower percentage than typical for wire jobs (around 25% at Belmont or Saratoga or Churchill), but not as low as people seem to be feeling.