Ilman's FormBlog: W/E Beyers

[blackthroatedwind]

Originally Posted by Kasept

More interestingly, Mark Casse told me yesterday that in his opinion, the BSF's from this fall at Woodbine are consistantly LOWER than they should have been... He doesn't believe that fig-wise Turf War jumped from a career high 80 to the 96....

Really? How much time has Mark Casse spent on Formulator comparing the Woodbine Polytrack figs to the figs these horses, or their competition, run on actual dirt tracks?

I've done a reasonable amount and I find a decent correlation. And, the Woodbine horses that have come to NY, while there haven't been many, haven't improved from what I've seen ( one private purchase for Hushion tanked last week ).

Here's what I think, and it's twofold, the first is after the horse ran so well Friday, Casse is under some pressure to answer why he wasn't running in bigger dirt races where he may well be a faster horse. But the other is the trip.....Turf War benefited from a huge pace and fell into a very advantageous trip while Z Humor worked hard ( needlessly hard in fact ) the entire race to earn his number. It's unlikely Turf War will get the kind of setup he got on Friday in too many dirt races and I won't be at all surprised when his numbers regress back to the Woodbine efforts.....though he obviously can and should improve a bit with maturity.