Inner track meet so far

[Left Bank]

Is it just me, or is the inner track starting to have more and more short field races? Seems many races of late have been having short fields, mirroring southern California. Do we have a horse shortage at Aqueduct this winter, or has everyone gone to Gulfstream?

[ranger5830]

It's not just you. So far, since the beginning of the inner track meet on 12-12, there have been 135 races with a total of 992 starters, for an average of just 7.35 starters per race. There has only been one 12-horse field and one 11-horse field, the rest have all been 10 or less. It actually hadn't been that bad until Sunday, when just 53 horses ran in 9 races, and today, when 57 ran in 9 races. Up until then, they were averaging 7.54 starters per race, which is down from Belmont but still not bad.

Sometimes we live in a "what have you done for me lately" world and since the last two race days have undoubtedly had very short fields it makes it seem like an ongoing problem, but hopefully these two days are just an aberration and fuller fields are coming.

[booner]

What were field sizes last year?

[ranger5830]

Originally Posted by booner

What were field sizes last year?

The inner track meet started two weeks earlier last year, so for an apples-to-apples comparison I just used the corresponding dates last year, from 12-14-11 to 1-11-12. There were 16 race dates (one more than this year due to a cancellation) and 1128 horses ran in 144 races, or an average of 7.83 starters per race.

[booner]

Thanks for digging up the info. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next month.

[parsixfarms]

Like last winter, there are plenty of empty stalls. However, there are two very significant differences between this year and last year: (1) the recently enacted rules expanding the recommended withdrawal times for clenbuterol in New York will likely limit the number of shippers from the mid-Atlantic states; and (2) with the "bottom" claiming price being raised from $7500 to $12,500, the connections of many of the lower-level horses that may have tried to compete here last year aren't making the effort now, especially with the rules restricting the purse to no more than 2X the claiming price.