I think that there are some synthetic generalizations that just aren't supported anymore. Last year, I argued that WO was a very fair track, in the sense that closers weren't penalized by slow paces (or minimal move races) and it was very difficult for speed to wire. This hasn't been the case as much this year, where speed seems to have as good a chance as closers. And, certainly, HOL and SA aren't exactly more favorable to late runners than they are to speed.
I think where confusion comes into to play is when we group UNFAIR (speed favoring) dirt tracks in with dirt tracks in general. Clearly, CRC, TAM, FG, even CD, among others, are as, if not more, favorable to closers than they are to front runners. And, when these tracks get wet, while speed holds on the speed favoring dirt tracks, races are much more prone to collapse on fair ones. As a result, there are, as best as I can determine, significantly more wipeouts on dirt, in particular OFF dirt tracks, than there are on poly and turf, where, additionally, and certainly beyond argument, you have much smaller gaps between the fields at the finish.
Horses that run a high number of wipeouts in relation to their overall races, like Z, and BL, to a much smaller extent, do so more easily on dirt because horses are more prone to come back on dirt, fair dirt, that is, than they are on poly, where they're much more bunched during the running of the race, and at the finish.
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