With rapidly changing weather conditions this time of year, it is critical that you take a look at the racing surface and don't just trust the fast-good-sloppy rating system. The other night, the track was listed fast, but was not frozen and there was a lot of moisture underneath it, leading to a "dead" track, hard on horses doing a lot of work. Here's an excerpt of my column from Harness Eye this month:
Watching the races at Northfield on Monday, February 4, I felt I was in a time warp. In more ways than one. There were winners in 2:10.2, 34-second quarters on the lead, and one back half race-timed in 1:07.4. It was reminiscent of the seventies. The fastest mile of the night went in 2:03! Balmoral Park has had to cancel its races twice after contesting the opener in the last week, and at Cal-Expo there were several final; quarters of 33 seconds or more and no sub-2:00 races on the mile oval. I guess Mother Nature isn’t a harness racing fan. Of course, she appears even more ticked off at Santa Anita’s artificial surface, so maybe we harness players shouldn’t complain.
But the simple fact is we need to pay attention to what is happening at the track and to the track. When I do my televised picks from the winners circle (which is any time it isn’t raining too hard and we have a cameraman and camera available), I always walk about fifty yards of the track. If the mud and rain are going to send me inside, I still get outside for a bit to check out the conditions. I always try to report that as I open my boradcast. I have an advantage—I am allowed to this, while you are not, unless you want to have a very kurt meeting with our Director of Security. If you attend the races regularly, you should be able to get a good idea of track condition simply by looking at the track, and you can get an idea of track bias by watching a few races. The two are related, but are very different.
Look, weather is unpredictable this time of year, especially in the Midwest and northeast, where harness racing is so prominent. But, as we saw at Cal Expo, nobody is immune. And it can often change not just from night to night, but from race to race. Sometimes more than once in a night. It is one of the advantages that an on-track player has over the simulcast or ADW bettor. The player at the track is able to see and analyze these changes sooner than the remote player. It’s an advantage. Use it.
Official track conditions are fast, good, sloppy, slow and muddy. You will rarely see slow or muddy tracks at a raceway (although it seems like they are guaranteed at any county fair at which I am scheduled to drive a Billings race). Fast tracks are usually dry, although a light rain in summer will not change the track condition. The problem this time of year, at least in Northeast Ohio, is that the track is usually fast because it is frozen solid! That makes it even harder than a normal fast track. Of course the horses can negotiate it, since they generally have borium, little dabs of metal, on their shoes, to help them grip a frozen or slippery surface. It’s easy to tell a frozen track at Northfield, because you will see so much dust kicked up by the starting car and sulkies. If we water the track, that water could well freeze, turning the track into a half-mile speed-skating rink. We rarely see good tracks this time of year, because if it warms up, the tracks thaw and go immediately from fast to sloppy, and then on to quagmire (no, it’s not really a new condition in the USTA E-track system). Suddenly, the borium is just bogging horses down and the fractions slow down to a crawl. More often than not, the front end will not hold up (because that leading horse is doing so much work and it is hard for the driver to determine exactly how much extra effort is being used. And, when the weather front passes through, it is often accompanied by strong winds. You have to pay attention to those things. First up or on the lead into that kind of gale is not easy and it takes a superior animal to overcome it.
Pick up a Harness Eye to read the rest of what I have to say about the importance of track condition!
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