It’s not dirt, and the Derby is
This passages comes off the Derby Trail (authored by blackthroatedwind) message board and shows the true situation with deciphering Kentucky Derby preps over the fake dirt…
“The bottom line is that this surface has particularly destroyed the Triple Crown prep season. One, it has elevated mediocre turf horses and fooled some people into thinking they are talented dirt horses, two, it has hampered dirt horses from actually getting to showcase their true talents, and three it has made the process of analyzing these preps virtually impossible.”
I thought this was fairly spot-on and telling.
If you look at last year’s Kentucky Derby, there were seven horses who won a race over synthetics and were largely considered synthetic horses. They finished 6th, 9th, 13th, 16th, 17th, 19th and 20th. Fairly interesting.
The lone exception would be Gayego, as he ran well on the dirt in the Arkansas Derby. On the flip side, Recapturetheglory lost his first two career races at Arlington (Polytrack) and then rattled off four good efforts in a row before running extremely well to finish 5th in the Derby itself.
In 2007, only two horses had at least one synthetic win with unproven dirt form and they finished 5th and 11th.
So while everyone gets all sorts of excited about Stardom Bound and Pioneer of the Nile etc., it’s worth thinking about the ultimate bottom line: It’s not dirt, and the Derby is.