I'm sure every attempt was made to quicken the track---as it was almost painful to watch races in the first two weeks of last years KEE fall meet, when the polytrack debuted.
Basically, every horse was taken in hand early, and inspite of horses getting loose on uncontested leads, through soft early fractions, they would still fade markedly late...even short priced logical horses.
Andy Beyer wrote about it--and it seemed an effort was made to speed up the track in the final week of last fall's meet.
A pair of 2-year-olds working in 20 1/5ths for a quarter mile in the preview....that's just insane.
The fastest quarter mile clocking at a 2-year-old in training sale last year was jointly held at 20 3/5ths by Tiz Wonderful and Day Pass. This year, prior to KEE, the fastest quarter mile preview was 20 4/5ths. 0.60 seconds may not sound like much---but, at that rate of speed, it's a far more signifcant margin than people think. It's about five lengths.
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