Synthetic breeding

[Calzone Lord]

Middie powered home and won clear. He got bet down and paid only $5.80 -- but he had to fall down in order to lose based on the synthetic figures everyone had him running.

Middie freaking stinks on turf and ran lousy on dirt -- he's got a killer kick on synthetic, though.

It's so rare that you see good turf route breeding mixed with dirt sprinter names like Officer, Phone Trick, Housebuster etc ... but those pedigrees come up in horses who prefer synthetic VS dirt or turf.

In Middie's case -- I think the Officer as the sire and Phone Trick on the bottom hurt him as a closing turf router. The Green Dancer hurts him as a dirt router.

I remember the first year they ran the BC Classic on Pro-Ride. Raven's Pass (by sprinter Elusive Quality) was an excellent miler on Turf, so it's unfair and inaccurate to call him a synthetic specialist -- but he was taken way back and absolutely blew Curlin away in the stretch and won the BC Classic clearly and paid $29

This was Elusive Quality:



Just the thought of a son of his closing from 10th place and double digit lengths back -- to blow the Breeders Cup Classic field apart in the stretch with a 23.64 final quarter mile... it's nuts.

Raven's Pass dam was a Turf Miler that David Donk trained in the 90's. She always ran in America. They never ran Raven Pass more than 8f on grass for his entire career. I don't think he would have had the same devastating stretch kick going 10f on turf that he showed going 10f on synthetic.