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Originally Posted by whodey17
Bailey and Moss made a point on ESPN that made sense to me...they basically said that the synthetic surface is so forgiving that the horse just bounces over the surface therefor not giving the proper conditioning the horse needs.
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The Derby is a unique race where horses have to be 100% fit to win. Prepping horses over the poly where they do not have to work as hard as they do over the dirt is not going to work if you train as though you are training over dirt. Pletcher screwed up because he trains almost all of his horses in the same manner regardless of the horse or surface. Pretty much you are going to get 5 furlongs in between 59 and 102 in company 6-8 days apart. That is fine in most races especially when you have talented horses. Many good horses can win by being 95% fit but the Derby, Triple Crown races and Breeders Cup to an extent are different animals. Circular Quay had 5 works between his race on March 10 and the Derby on May 5th. Between March 14 and Derby day the winner had 6 works and 2 races. How can a horse be fit enough to win going 1 mile and 1/4 against the best of his generation with this type of preperation? We have been using the rule of thumb that polyworks are about a second and a half faster than dirt works which means a 100 five furlong poly work is equal to about 101.3 on the Dirt. My horses seem to be about that much faster working 4 and 5 furlongs over the poly than they do over dirt regardless of class level. If you are going to work exclusively over the poly to prepare for a race like the Derby, you better adjust and do a whole lot more than you would on the dirt.