Pricing the Derby

[ArlJim78]

Originally Posted by JJP

Who is a "synthetic star"? Is there such a thing? Just because Tiago and Heatseeker ran 1-2 in the Oaklawn Cap and Gayego won the Arkansas Derby, it has no bearing on whether Colonel John will handle real dirt. Tiago HAS run on real dirt before so he can't even be included.

I contend that fall Churchill is now unplayable due to the heavy diet of 2YO racing and the majority of them have run all their previous races at Keeneland, Arlington and Turfway over Polytrack. I remember seeing some very chaotic results there last November and the underlying reason was so many horses who'd never run on real dirt and nobody really knew if they'd handle it.

Synthetic racing is certainly closer to grass than dirt and one cannot use grass form to project how a horse will run on converntional dirt.

forget synthetic stars then, name ANY prominent horse. i contend that synthetic to dirt is nothing at all like the consideration for turf horses going to dirt. far more synthetic horses run just fine on dirt compared to turf horses.