By Joe Takach

Polysurfaces are the new question marks in racing and wreaking havoc on some handicappers.  

Last November Southern California handicappers were introduced to a new polysurface at Hollywood Park.  We have just completed the second Hollywood Park polysurface meet and Del Mar will introduce their new polysurface at the opening of their 2007 meet.  (Might also mention that Santa Anita goes synthetic in late September, which will complete the new Southern California “polytrinity”).

Nobody really knew what to expect last fall when moving from Santa Anita’s dirt surface to a synthetic one at Hollywood Park and had little to go on other than what had occurred at other new synthetic surfaces back East.   

I’ll admit to being cautiously excited.  I suspected that an entirely “new world” was about to open and that new world would surely offer huge mutuel rewards for those who had the right betting information.  But exactly what was the “right” information?   

Constant chatter among the “paddock sages” ranged from breeding, to running styles, to track speed, to track running bias, to trainers, to jockeys, to trainer/jockey combos, to post position, to the rail, to early speed, to midpack runners, to closers, to shippers with prior experience over another polysurface, to the new surface being “kind” to physically problematic runners, and finally to weather.  (Yes, we actually see rain once in a blue moon in sunny Southern California, but it’s not a good idea to hold your breath in between our scarce precipitation). 

Trying to arrange all these complex variables into their proper hierarchy to cash a ticket would be a formidable task and surely take time.  There wasn’t any sacred ground as of yet, because the polysurface was still virgin.  Immutable “polysurface laws” were yet to create and define themselves.  Nothing had been carved in stone.  It was kind of scary and exciting like sky diving for the first time, opening your Harley Davidson all the way up, or seeing how far you can push your Corvette.   

Fortunately, after publishing the DAILY SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HORSES TO WATCH for the past 16 years with my longtime staff, we eventually developed the organizational skills and computer capabilities to pioneer the poly research.  

Trial and error suddenly became our best friends because they offered new and valuable learning experiences that would translate into winners in the near future.  The only way we could advance our knowledge was by following all of what the Southern California “paddock sages” felt was relevant.  They all made sense in one way or the other, and any of them could turn out to be a dominant winning factor.  Scrutiny became our internal “byword”.  We set up many different categories to follow along with other situational occurrences that became evident as time went on.    

We really did go were no other handicappers had gone before.  Since there were 6 of us doing the research and the inputting to our data base, we weren’t overworked and had ample time to gather and properly interpret this essential “proprietary information”. 

We ended up calling our new research the DAILY SCHTW WEEKLY POLYTRACK REPORT. 

The weekly report started off slowly with the basics.   

Number one on the list was the tracking of daily running profiles.  We broke down winners by specific distance and specific surface into 4 categories.   

WTW (wire to wire winners included pacesetters any dueling horses within ½ length of each other at the 2^nd running call), S/P (stalker/pressers are winners that were ¾ length to 2 ½ lengths behind the leader at the 2^nd running call), M (midpack winners were 2 ¾ lengths to 6 lengths behind the pacesetter at the 2^nd running call) and C (closing winners were over 6 lengths behind the pacesetter at the 2^nd running call). 

Here’s what happened for the first 36 days of polyracing at Hollywood Park during the fall 2006 :  

                         FALL 2006 HOLLYWOOD PARK RUNNING PROFILES     

                           11/01/06  THRU  12/18/06                                                              

                                      POLYSURFACE                

                  5.5          6        6.5         7         7.5                 8.5        9        10      11      

WTW       2        36      19      10      3                18        0

S/P         0        19      18       7                         19        0

M            1        19      16       9       1                12        0

                  4        75        56        32          6                  55         1                                                                                               

 229  TOTAL POLYWINNERS----11/01/06  THRU  12/18/06 

When comparing this to the same meet in 2005 over a dirt surface we see the following: 

FALL 2005 HOLLYWOOD PARK RUNNING PROFILES

11/09/05  THRU  12/19/05                                                            

DIRT                

                5.5         6       6.5        7         7.5                 8.5         9        11             

WTW         2        40        17       13          2        34         0         1                             

S/P      5       20    16     12       3      22         0        0         

M         0        10    5       2        1       8         1          0         

                   7       72    41      33    6      66      2         1                                                                   

228   TOTAL DIRT WINNERS----11/09/04  THRU  12/19/05 

See anything interesting when comparing these 2 meets? 

We sure did and positively did not expect the running profiles to almost duplicate themselves considering that the 2 surfaces were so drastically different in composition! 

The “paddock sages” had predicted that midpack runners (M) would dominate as they had back East with closers (C) doing more than their fair share of damage.   

As you can see that simply didn’t happen. 

Early horses (both WTW and S/P runners) were clearly in control as they had been over the prior dirt surface.   

While midpack runners (M) did slightly better at most distances as did some closers (C), they dominated absolutely nothing.   

We then moved to daily running biases for each distance over the new polysurface. 

In order to properly interpret running biases, one must ascertain exactly what running paths winners were actually running in, rather that merely saying “so and so” was 4 wide down the backstretch.  Saying “4 wide” down the backstretch doesn’t mean that the horse was actually in the 4 path because he was 4 wide, he could have been in the 7, 8 or 9 path with horses to his inside well off the rail. 

We broke the running bias into 3 categories.   

Inside winners traveled the 1-2 path, middle winners ran in the 3-5 paths, and outside winners took the overland route in the 6 path outward. 

For the entire and completed 7 week meet we had a total of 229 polyraces with the combined final breakdowns below. 

Inside:      82 

Middle:  119 

Outside:   28             

-----               

229 

The new Hollywood rail was user-friendly for the first time in recent memory.   

Our next move was to winning post positions by specific polysurface distances from 5 ½ furlongs up to 9 furlongs and the final tallies are below.