AP '08 Dates Announced
 

Arlington was "awarded" racing dates from 5/2-9/25 for the 2008 season. A little help on the back end over this year, but still couldn't push deep into Oct because of the GC at Hawthorne....aka...The Palace...

I miss Hawthorne. Nothing like Smokestack Downs. Not to mention the view of the ruins of Sportsmans from the ramp.

I believe that's Hawthorne in your Avatar?

Not to re-ignite the dirt vs Poly discussion, but I wonder what it will be like as these horses re-transition from poly back to dirt after having made the switch earlier this Spring?

Alas, it's not Hawthorne. A nice place but nowhere near the majesty of the Palace of Stickney. At least I have my memories. Reavis with belt buckle as big as your head. Mancari with suits so shiny you could be blinded by looking directly at him.

There will be many good bets as tiring speedballs from AP will last much, much longer. And any deep closing winner from AP should be strongly downgraded.

Hush right now!! :)

the horses move from a fair track where early speed horses win at about a 30% clip to a track that rewards early speed to the insane level of 50% winners. count on plenty of boring races as they ride the conveyor belt.

I thought that Poly at Arlington played like a conveyor belt more times than not......

Statistically speaking, it was a very EVEN meet, like 29% of favorites won, inside/outside post won at 50% of the time, and closers vs speed split also.

Now, I question these numbers because the last two weeks at Arlington was speed upon speed, on both courses for that matter. Early in the meet you had to be in the back half to have a shot.

speed was not disadvantaged there as many claim, but it was nothing like hawthorne.

Other than Mogadishu, there arent many places like Hawthorne.

Disadvantaged? Maybe not, but it certainly wasn't like the Arlington dirt track either. It is better than Kee and Dmr, that is for sure.

everytime i look@sportsmans i wanna cry when walking in and out of the thorne up the ramp. since im a owner these days i tend to just go in the track underneath from the horsemans lot to avoid waiting in line and to avoid seeing sportsmans. wish i had the loot id buy the SP property and the HAW property(although the careys will never sell no matter the price) and build one huge beautiful new track on both lots. lol maybe kinda like AQU with a winter surface that being poly and also with a reg dirt course.........ahhhhhhhhhhhh fun to dream:)

Hey...did anyone ever hear anymore about what Duchessois was going to do with Carey's loan that he bought from Harris Bank? A year ago that was big news as he could have forced them into foreclosure by calling in the loan. Is he really playing that nice with them?

i think it was a debt from sportsmans he bought out regarding the barns sitting on the HAW property that sportsmans used to own and is now owned bu dick d, last i heard a couple days ago is that a agreement is near between the careys and dick d about the barns that cover i think round 500 stalls

So it just covered those barns? I thought it was a bigger deal than that, but maybe not.

well if hawthorne keeps going in the financial downward spiral its in dick D will be able to buy their debt from the bank also LOL and run a 8-9 month meet at arlington

Do you think if the GC was run at Arlington that Tafel would think twice about sending SS there?

why should it be the same as the arlington dirt? was there some magical correctness about how it played? honestly I'm not sure that in the end there was a huge difference in how it played. I'll check when I get home.

Arl plays different than Kee and Dmr because its a longer meet. if you haven't noticed by now when horses that haven't been training or running on poly run on it for the first time they get noticeably tired, especially cheaper horses. but as the meet goes on they adapt and the normal tendencies begin to take shape again, for example the dominance of horses that have good early speed.

That's an interesting thing I never thought about -- since horses were tiring and stopping like piles of bricks for the first few weeks, and then the last 3/4 of the meet showed that it ended up being one of the fairest tracks around.

It is my understanding that the loan has nothing to do with those barns. Duch has owned those barns for some time. He is just turning screws.

I could be 100% wrong though, but I thought I read the above somewhere.

Mr. D bought out the bank note owed by the National Jockey Club that used to operate the Sportman's meet and took ownership of all of their property. The property in question is 500 stalls in barns at Hawthorne that are now owned by D but interestingly enough he doesn't own the land they are built on. Mr. D is basically holding up Hawthorne to get them to buy the barns or he has threatened to demolish them. The sides couldn't agree on a purchase price but have agreed to go into binding arbitration to work it out. After reaching an agreement on these barns, Mr. D will still own the balance of the old NJC property.

I compiled these numbers from bris data, showing how the various running styles at Hawthorne and Arlington compare, and also the effect of poly at Arlington. Basically you can see that not all dirt tracks are created equal as Hawthorne is what I would call speed biased. Poly seems more fair because it breaks out more equally between early speed and closers.


Percent of races won – six furlongs

Hawthorne spring meet 2007
E type 47%, E/P type 28%, P type 12%, S type 13%

Arlington 2006 meet (dirt)
E type 35%, E/P type 32%, P type 18%, S type 15%

Arlington 2007 meet (poly)
E type 31%, E/P type 24%, P type 16%, S type 29%


Percent of races won – 1 1/16 miles

Hawthorne spring meet 2007
E type 42%, E/P type 22%, P type 12%, S type 19%

Arlington 2007 meet (poly)
E type 32%, E/P type 17%, P type 24%, S type 27%


Percent of races won – one mile

Arlington 2006 meet (dirt)
E type 30%, E/P type 28%, P type 21%, S type 22%

Arlington 2007 meet (poly)
E type 32%, E/P type 20%, P type 22%, S type 26%

75% in the top flight, what a sickening number. And I am willing to bet that the other 25% is from races where Laviolette went 43.1 or Thornton got front happy.

1st time I ever remember someone using Aqueduct as a role model

If the conveyor belt was in the 5th path and carrying closers.....

As for statistics, the 1 1/16 mile races on the AP Poly should be totally tossed out, since in previous years, they basically never ran them (maybe 5 in the previous 15 years combined). These races are basically handed to a speed horse on a silver platter, with the short run to the turn and the finish line at the 1/16th pole for an approxiametely 700 foot stretch run. I noticed that when they'd have a mile race taken off the turf, they'd run one of those goofy 1 1/16 mile races. I believe AP management wanted these, because they knew they would skew their statistics to make the early speed numbers a bit better. If those races were run out of the mile chute like they should've been, no doubt there would have been a noticeable change.

I know you read my post three back with the running style statistics, but apparently you didn't understand what it meant as it completely refutes what you are contending here. The 1 1/16 races at AP were not handed to speed horses on a silver platter, compared to the mile chute races the running styles faired remarkably similar, in fact they're nearly identical.

Why should the 1 1/6 mile data be thrown out? I didn't compare it to previous years because frankly I don't have that data and am not interested in it. It was a different surface and track configuration so why would it matter? I was interested in comparing this years 1 1/16 races to the mile chute races, and to the 1 1/16 miles races at Hawthorne. That is entirely valid.

Also since it seems you don't like races handed to speed horses on a silver platter, where are your comments about Hawthorne? Did you look at the data.:eek: If anyone is trying to skew their numbers towards speed horses its Hawthorne not AP.

I highly doubt that Arlington management went through the trouble of adding a second finish line and carding 1 1/16 mile races to skew the statistics to make early speed numbers look better. If so they failed miserably.
I believe that there was a demand for the distance from horseman who wanted a 2 turn alternative to 1 1/8 miles.

I was (and to some extent still am) indifferent about the great poly debate. But by any reasonable measure, the decision to go to polytrack at Arlington was a good one. As ArlJim pointed out, the track was very fair. It was certainly a lot more fair than Hawthorne. How biased was Hawthorne this spring? Just ask those people who bet on Cowtown Cat in the Kentucky Derby.
But in addition to the fairness of the track:
Fatal in-race breakdowns declined from 24 to 12.
Attendance was up.
Handle was up.
Field-size was up.
I have said it before, but I guess for some people it bears repeating. I don't think it makes sense any longer to be 100% pro-synthetic or 100% against synthetic. In some places it is working well, and in other places it is not. Each surface is a little different (just like dirt). There are tracks that I think have bad synthetic surfaces (Del Mar) and there are ones with good ones (Arlington), just like there were and are bad dirt tracks (old Keeneland and Hawthorne) and good ones.

Maybe you're right. But it does seem odd that they'd take what amounts to, a completely unused distance and start carding many races at it. I saw one day they ran SIX races at 1 1/16. Let me clarify on the running styles at 1 1/16m; speed horses are helped enormously by a short stretch run and short run to the first turn; just check mile races at OP. The fact that AP's result distribution doesn't have a high percentage of w/w winners at 1 1/16 miles is just further evidence of how tiring that track is.

As for Haw, yes speed can carry well, especially on days the rail is great. I also should point out that their spring meets are generally plagued by very small fields, which are less likely to be gapped out big, or have hard 3 way pace battles. I haven't had a chance to see the opening day results; I'm curious to see how the track played.

thats a good point, 5-6 horse fields inherently favor speed horses on any track, and Hawthorne sometimes has bunches of them.