Is Del Mar’s Polytrack Fair? Yep!
by BetUS Staff
With about two more weeks left in the Del Mar Racing Meet, it’s time to take a look at how that fickle Polytrack is playing. I say fickle because Polytrack, even though it’s made of the same substance no matter where it is in the country, plays differently depending on where you are in the country.
In fact, Polytrack usually plays differently every day which is one of the reasons that finding winners on the artificial surface has been such a chore for online racebook fans. Del Mar’s Polytrack has sort of changed that notion.
It’s not that Del Mar’s Polytrack is playing differently from any other track in the nation; it’s that Del Mar’s Polytrack is playing fairer than any other track in the nation. There doesn’t appear to be any speed bias regarding the Del Mar Polytrack. There doesn’t appear to be any closers’ bias either.
The problem with a track that plays fair is that for most online Big Brown to win the Haskell Invitational versus a bunch of inferior foes and you get the idea. Big Brown rallied from the outside and had trouble running down the lone speed in that race.
Fair tracks inevitably lead to traditional handicapping angles such as predicting a horse’s trip or relying on the jockey to make the right decision. Those sorts of angles have been lost when handicapping races in the States because of America’s absolute love of speed and speed numbers.
The truth is that there are always slight changes that occur to every track every day between races. It doesn’t matter whether the track is an artificial track or a conventional dirt track. But it’s important to realize that in the grand scheme of things, unless it’s glaringly obvious, these slight changes shouldn’t affect the outcome of a race.
I’m not going to dwell on those things any more. Instead, I’m going to give online racebook fans a few stats that show exactly how fair the Del Mar Polytrack has been this summer.
Let’s take a look at winning post positions. According to the stats, the best winning post in main track sprints has been the 3 and 8 posts. The 3 is winning at 17%. The 8 is winning at 18%. The next highest winning post is the 7 at 14%. After the 7 the next highest is the 9 at 12% Outside posts in dirt sprints is usually where stalkers can take advantage of speed up front by hanging back by a length or two and then taking the lead in the stretch.
The same appears true for sprint races on the Del Mar Polytrack. Why is post 3 doing so well? This is probably an anomaly in the sense that most horses who have broken from post 3 and won have been either front runners without much pace pressure or closers that face speed duels. If it were a stat that meant something else, then there’s no way that post four or five wouldn’t close to the same percentages.
As far as main track routes are concerned, the percentages are all over the board. Posts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10 all show winning percentages above 11%. Post 3 shows a winning percentage above 21% but, again, that doesn’t mean much. Horses breaking from Post 3 rarely stay in the 3 path. How could that actually be considered a bias? More than likely, the best horses in the best pace set-ups have broken from post 3 at the Del Mar Meet.
Speaking of pace, there is no other factor that I can think of that clearly defines the fairness of the Del Mar Polytrack than pace. I have a personal friend who comes up with his own pace numbers. Although all pace numbers are different, they all sort of do the same thing - - try and discover if there is a speed or closers’ bias at any given track and try to help online racebook fans predict the style of the race.
Here’s an examples:
Let’s say that you look in your racing form and you see that at 6 furlongs on the Del Mar Polytrack the pace par, the average, for winners in the race you are looking at is made up of these three numbers: 93, 96, 83. What do these numbers represent? First, they represent how each part of the race has been run. The 93 and 96 and 83 taken together implies that horses that run fast early usually do well at the end.
But that’s not all that the pace ratings imply. They also imply that good front runners do well at the end. It’s important to remember the word “good”. Bad front runners won’t do well in this pace rating scenario because the number 93, 96 and 83 are pretty close to each other. Make sense? Think of it this way - - if the numbers were 107, 111, and 77, then you could definitively say that the race you are looking at is geared towards front running speed horses. Horses that get the lead early - - the 107 and 111 - - have a chance of hanging on - - the steep drop to a 77 - - and winning the race. Closers will not do well in a 107, 111, 77 speed bias pace set-up because there is a huge difference between the first two pace numbers and the last.
In a 93, 96, 83 set up closers will do well because the averages really aren’t that far apart at any time during the race. This is the reason that front runners, stalkers and closers can all do well on the Del Mar Polytrack. 93, 96 and 83 implies consistency. Consistency means the shape of the race is going to determine the winner.
Does it make handicapping the Del Mar Polytrack easier? Yes and no. It makes it easier to find the horses that have a chance. But it also makes it harder to find the horse that should win because on a fair track most horses in the race will have a chance. So instead of having to find the winner out of four contenders, there could be up to eight contenders or more on the Del Mar Polytrack.
What should online racebook fans do? Set a limit as to what online odds they are willing to take in the race and studying the entire set up of the race. Traditional handicapping principals - - speed, pace, jockey, class - - can serve any online racebook fan well when handicapping the Del Mar Polytrack.
There just isn’t a real bias, either towards front runners or closers, to contend with.
