Hey, I'm reticent to bet Polytrack, but using an example of a 2YO filly winning a weak race where nobody had run many races is hardly strong.
I did handicap the other stakes thoroughly and the sprint winner was hardly impossible, the race was wide open, and the two supposedly good Polytrack horses did nothing. I preferred the second horse and had Desormeaux not butchered him, check out that ride, he would have won. The Distaff race was won by a hard horse but only because of the distance and I have a hard time buying Polytrack caused a horse to win at 1 1/16th that appears to barely want 7F. It's not as though she was carried along on the front end. Her numbers were easily good enough to win it was really just a distance question. The second finisher, La Reason, was to me the most logical horse and she performed pretty much the same on polytrack as she does on dirt ( i.e. once again not quite good enough to win ). The 2YO colt race was a total crapshoot and the winner exited a prep where an argument could have been made that he performed best that day and only Saturday's post hindered him. In other words there was really no particularly logical result in that race.
What I'm basically saying is that in order to dismiss polytrack as unplayable, and believe me I'm as skeptical as anyone, we should at least watch this Keeneland meet seriously. And I don't want to hear any of that " oh, God, there's a 7500 claimer in the second race on opening day! " because I would bet a lot of money they are using pretty much the same book they use every year. This is Keeneland in the Fall, not the Spring, and yes they run claimers at Keeneland all the time....even cheap ones. Let's keep our eye on the ball and certainly not use polytrack as yet another reason we just can't win.
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