Why did Keenland even decide to put Poly****

[disrespectnfool]

to increase the discussion on this site.

[Round Pen]

Obviously you did not know much about the track at Keeneland Before Poly or you would not have asked that Question.

It was single handedly the worst Surface of any race track in the Country. I have seen first hand, horses would run down just Galloping over the old surface. And talking about a track Bias Old Keeneland had Probably the worst. Many times I have seen 8 races on the dirt and 8 races were the horse that made the lead won. It was incredible the front end bias there. And if it came up Sloppy there was no Chance for A closer. if you did not have speed you did not win.

I am not saying Polytrack is the answer for the Future but something had to be done about the surface at Keeneland.

[SentToStud]

Originally Posted by Round Pen

Obviously you did not know much about the track at Keeneland Before Poly or you would not have asked that Question.

It was single handedly the worst Surface of any race track in the Country. I have seen first hand, horses would run down just Galloping over the old surface. And talking about a track Bias Old Keeneland had Probably the worst. Many times I have seen 8 races on the dirt and 8 races were the horse that made the lead won. It was incredible the front end bias there. And if it came up Sloppy there was no Chance for A closer. if you did not have speed you did not win.

I am not saying Polytrack is the answer for the Future but something had to be done about the surface at Keeneland.

Surface problems is one thing. The bias is another. Really all they did, bias-wise, was replace the old bias with a new bias.

Anyone have a feel for why there is such an anti-speed bias at Keeneland compared to Woodbine and Turfway?

[Scav]

Originally Posted by SentToStud

Surface problems is one thing. The bias is another. Really all they did, bias-wise, was replace the old bias with a new bias.

Anyone have a feel for why there is such an anti-speed bias at Keeneland compared to Woodbine and Turfway?

Horses go wire to wire all the time at Woodbine, especially at night

[dellinger63]

Keenland has definately favored closers but more recently the rail seems to be DEAD. Love the feet traveled the track is posting alongside the order of finish. Takes all the guess work away from "how far wide" was a particular horse.
Also when they go to CD there will be more than a few opportunities to catch speed horses affected by the bias (both rail and closing) at generous odds IMO.

[Pointg5]

I don't really buy into the theory that you just have to change your ways to find who wins the race...

I believe that horses have a prefferred style of running, speed, stalk, mid, or closers and that they perform optimally when they can do that...Even if a track was speed favoring that doesn't mean there's still not a possibilty for a speed duel to set up the others, it will happen even on a speed favoring track, but with this track, the off the pace horses aren't winning because the race is blowing up, they are winning, because they handle the track better and they are allowed to run with their optimum style...If you're a trainer and you're watching the races and you have a speed horse, you're probably going to tell the jock to hold back and put a speed/stalker out of their optimum running style, not to mention they probably won't like the track...I watched many races at KEE, probably 80% of them since 1999 at KEE, sure there was a good amount of them going wire to wire in most cases it was the 1 1/16th races that this happened in, because they would change the finish line in those races to be closer to the turn, but with the 6f and 7f races, if you watched alot of them it was usually a wall of horses battling to get position and not just one horse popping it, in this scenario this gave the stalkers and speed horses a chance, along with the closers to win if there's a total meltdown...I miss the old KEE, I really do, it pains me not to go down there, but I just won't have it...

[zippyneedsawin]

Here are some standard answers for the switch:

http://polytrack.com/qa.html



Other than that, doesn't Keeneland itself own an interest in Polytrack?

[SniperSB23]

Originally Posted by SentToStud

Surface problems is one thing. The bias is another. Really all they did, bias-wise, was replace the old bias with a new bias.

Anyone have a feel for why there is such an anti-speed bias at Keeneland compared to Woodbine and Turfway?

I have a feeling it will be tweaked a little by the April meet to eliminate (or at least reduce) the bias against speed.

[Pointg5]

Originally Posted by SentToStud

Surface problems is one thing. The bias is another. Really all they did, bias-wise, was replace the old bias with a new bias.

Anyone have a feel for why there is such an anti-speed bias at Keeneland compared to Woodbine and Turfway?

Like Kasept said, I think it's the Poly along with the major restructuring of the course itself, they made the turns wider and got rid of a downhill slope...It's too bad they just didn't do this in the first place along with putting down a better dirt surface, they would have the best of both worlds, a nice track, plus poly to train on...