Perhaps the most important piece of background info that effects how I interpret a race is the track bias. The exact same race on night one may constitute a poor effort whereas that same race on night two might constitute an acceptable or even outstanding effort. There are many different types of track bias, so let's start off part one of this discussion by defining these, and covering the most general aspect. We'll move on to more subtle aspects in future installments of Handicapping Corner.

There are several types of track bias which we need to be aware:

General track bias - due to size, surface, shape of track, construction of track, caliber of horses and drivers

Seasonal bias - how the temperature and average weather conditions affect the way races are run

Weather related - how moisture, excess winds, etc. affect the races, and how the track maintenance offsets or does not offset this.

Specific night - how all of the above conspire to affect what we expect on a single racing night, and what actually ends up happening.

General Track Bias:

You wouldn't just look at a horse's fractions or time without noticing what size track the race was run on, would you? Why not? Because the tracks are different, that's why. And we all know that different size tracks provide not only different speeds (final times), but different types of relative fractions as well. And we know that this influences, or "biases" the chances of certain horses. Take a track like Pocono Downs, in mid-summer, fast track, calm winds. The track has a noticeable bias toward speed. In-shape closers can win, but in-shape front-enders do better. At the Meadows, closers do better than at Pocono. At the Meadowlands, when the weather gets warm, there is also a pretty good speed bias, for a mile track. Garden State on the other hand, is more balanced. As for half-milers, Saratoga sticks out as a track where horses can come from off the pace to win. At Northfield, if you go 4-wide in the final bend, you're in the parking lot, thus, if you ain't right up there turning for home, forget it. So the first basic thing to understand is the general bias of the track, at that time of year on a dry surface, prevailing winds in place, etc. In other words, normal weather.

Generally speaking, the longer the distance from the top of the stretch to the finish line, the better the chances for a closer. He has time to find room, clear other horses and gain momentum. He has less need to rush wide, so he can wait until later in the final turn, or better yet, wait until they straighten away, then angle wide, saving valuable energy and ground. Also in general, the longer the distance from the start to the first turn, the better it is for front-runners. Why? Because they can leave, even from the outside, and have time to either make the top or get position before being parked. Also, the fastest leaver can more often get the top before being hung in a turn.

The width of the track matters too. The narrower, the better for front runners. This way, if closers try to come wide, they disappear into the outskirts of doom! To counter this, tracks have various amounts of bank and crown, but I won't get into this. If you wish to see this, take an afternoon, go to Freehold. Stand right up at the rail near the track, and watch a race. As the horses come by you, you will not see them... instead, you will see the numbers on top of their heads! A slight exaggeration, but if you try this, you'll see how deep this track is crowned.

Generally speaking, half-mile ovals are biased to front runners, mile ovals toward closers, 5/8 someplace in between. Now some numbers. They give you the speed ratings in the program, but here are some numbers they DON'T give you - you have to research them yourself - or tune in the here!

Now this chart does not reflect the placement of the starting/finishing line at each track, which varies. But just take a look at tracks of similar size, and imagine the configuration. A longer stretch, of course, for a track of a given size means the turns must be tighter.

One odd thing here that sticks out for the 1/2 milers is Yonkers, which has a notoriously short stretch. That's because of the placement...much of the 660 is after the start. With Freehold, on the other hand, most of the 480 is before the start...the gate springs and they're practically in the turn already. Saratoga's 550 set's up fairly for closers.

In the 5/8 category, comparing tracks that we are familiar with, we see that The Meadows has a longer stretch than Pocono. It also has a USTA speed rating about a half a second faster the Pocono. Also, the prevailing wind at Pocono is against the horses turning for home, which tends to exaggerate the bias by forcing stretch runners to make their move head on into the wind.

So, before we start looking at individual nights, or individual races, let's understand what the natural bias of the track. This is because we are only interested in nights where the action unfolds in a way that is different than the norm. I think that it is dangerous to just use speed ratings to compare tracks, because the track bias has much to do with how fractions unfold, and what type of horse can benefit.

In my next installment, I'll get away from this theoretical stuff, and look at a couple of extreme cases of track bias from recent past, just to show you how important it can be. By the way, it helps if you save your programs, and the charts if you really want to do this. So, if you are doing this by computer, download them all into files. If you only work with printed programs, either scan them into your computer, or save them all, along with the charts, in a file. Trust me, this will make a big difference. Incidentally, the reason that I do not like betting on sloppy tracks is not because favorites don't win - it's because it's much tougher to translate the bias from that particular evening or compare that to a bias that was formed on a dry racetrack! You must be comparing apples to apples, not apples to oranges!

Steve M.