Time

[Calzone Lord]

Originally Posted by Perrault Robbed

Secondly, when you have a track like Santa Anita this meet that is just closing, how well can you gauge the times of the races? It leveled off a tad in terms of insane clockings as the meet wore on, but, all in all fractional and final times bordered on the absurdly fast to the point that I didnt even give them a look until maybe the last month of the meet or so. Does a track get so fast that it makes gauging fractional and final times vs track speed nearly impossible?

No. The track can be insanely fast -- but it will be the same for everyone and that won't make figure making any more difficult.

Grade 1 horses might run 7 furlongs in 1:20 ... but $20K claimers will run 6.5 furlongs in 1:14 and change.

The real mess with track speed comes on days when it rains halfway thorugh a card -- and the track is sealed up and sometimes reharrowed again and the track super is doing maitenence work on it during the turf races. That happens at Saratoga a lot.