Weighty Issues - the trials and tribulations of writing conditions for 3 surfaces | Trainer Magazine | European Trainer Article Index

Oct 14

Oct 14 Weighty Issues - the trials and tribulations of writing conditions for 3 surfaces

T headache when weighting horses. By Bill Heller HE job of a racing secretary has never been easy. Pleasing an entire population of horsemen simultaneously may be literally impossible. The recent advent of synthetic racing surfaces has increased a racing secretary’s challenges exponentially. And it’s not likely to stop. Nobody knows that better than Ben Huffman. With remarkable candor, the veteran racing secretary of Churchill Downs and Keeneland explained why he would like another shot at weighting the horses that contested the $557,600 Grade 1 Woodford Reserve Turf Classic at Churchill Downs on May 2nd, the race before the Kentucky Derby. “Frankly, that one got by me,” Huffman said. “Einstein should have been the highweight.” Instead, because of the weight allowances Huffman had written into the stakes in January – several weeks before Einstein (Brz) won the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap on Pro-Ride, the track’s synthetic course – Einstein carried 119 pounds, five less than highweight Court Vision. 52 TRAINERMAGAZINE.com ISSUE 14 The allowances Huffman had written for the stakes specified “Non-winners of a Grade or Group 1 stakes over a mile on turf since October 3, 2008, allowed 3lbs.; $150,000 over a mile on the turf since September 1, 2008, 5lbs.; a graded or group stakes a mile or over in 2008-2009, 7lbs.” He wishes he could go back in time and tweak those allowance conditions. “My weight allowances were ‘Grade 1 on turf’,” Huffman said. “Einstein won a Grade 1 on synthetic. We’re so used to writing weight allowances for turf, ‘Grade 1 wins on turf.’ There’s never been a Grade 1 winner of the Santa Anita Handicap who came here for the Woodford Reserve. No horse had ever come from the Santa Anita Handicap and run in the Woodford. I’d written those conditions in January. He hadn’t even won yet. I didn’t have the Big ‘Cap on my mind. I could have written ‘any Grade 1.’ Especially with synthetics, you have to be more careful. I won’t miss it again.” Huffman didn’t realize Einstein’s surprising low weight until he saw an overnight. “I said, ‘Oh-oh,’” he said. “That was a mistake on my part.” Quite naturally, the weights didn’t sit well with Court Vision’s connections. “Not at all,” Bill Mott, the horse’s Hall of Fame trainer, said in August. “Einstein got away with murder. We don’t give five pounds to horses like him. He slipped in. Good for him; bad for us. Generally, that doesn’t happen. The conditions were written ‘nonwinners on turf.’ There used to be quite a difference between dirt and turf. Now you have synthetics in the middle.” Carrying 119 pounds, Einstein barely won the 2009 Woodford Reserve by a head over Cowboy Cal, who had the same impost. Court Vision, toting five more pounds than both, rallied from last in the field of nine to finish third, 2¾ lengths behind Cowboy Cal. The Daily Racing Form chart notes that Court Vision “angled out entering the stretch when making a good move, but could not sustain the bid.” We’ll never know what would have happened if Einstein had been the highweight. But carrying high weight isn’t like it used to be. Mott trained North America’s last great handicap horse, Cigar, the two-time Horse of the Year who won 16 consecutive races, tying Citation’s all-time mark. Cigar carried 130 pounds to win both the 1996 MassCap and the Citation Challenge. Skip Away, who defeated Cigar in the 1996 Jockey Club Gold Cup carrying 121 to Cigar’s 126, won the 1998 MassCap carrying 130 and the Iselin Handicap carrying 131. Those days are long gone. “Since then, some of the other horses that have come around have been lucky enough to get into weight-for-ages,” Mott said. “I don’t know if that’s good for the sport. We always had both. The thing is about the handicaps now, I think every racing secretary that’s weighting races is a little more careful putting too much weight on anybody because they can race somewhere else. We can ship horses around the country, whether by air charter or by air cargo. If a guy doesn’t like the weights, they literally fly across the country and get in another race. There was a time you had traditional races that everybody had to run in because everybody was there.” Because trainers have that option with their top horses, the challenge for racing secretaries these days is getting enough quality horses into weight-for-age stakes if there is a standout nobody wants to race against. It’s a challenge Del Mar Racing Secretary Tommy Robbins confronted August 9th in the Grade 1 Clement L. Hirsch Handicap as unbeaten Zenyatta pursued her 12th career victory in a stakes she had captured in 2008, setting a track record doing so. “Your fear as a racing secretary is that you don’t get enough competition,” said Robbins, who has also been the racing secretary at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. He was delighted when nine other fillies and mares entered against Zenyatta in the Hirsch. And even though three of them would scratch, Robbins was happy. That still left a field of seven. “I didn’t think we’d get seven horses,” Robbins said. This year, the Hirsch was run weight-forage. “We’ve changed,” Robbins said. “We changed some of our graded stakes this summer. There’s been a push on a national level to get more weight-for-age races.” Is that good for racing? “It’s certainly better for the better horses because they don’t get weighted out of races,” Robbins said. “That’s been the push of many people the last few years.” Robbins wrote in two weight allowances for the Hirsch, which assigned three-year-olds 119 pounds and older fillies and mares 123: “Non-winners of a Grade 1 at a mile or over in 2009 allowed two pounds,” and “non-winners of a Grade 2 at a mile or over in 2008 allowed four pounds.” Thus did Zenyatta and her stablemate Life Is Sweet carry 123 pounds and the other five fillies and mares 119 each. “If it had been a handicap, Zenyatta would have carried a lot more,” Robbins said. As it was, Zenyatta was life and death to edge Anabaa’s Creation by a head, spotting that rival four pounds. That made Zenyatta 12-for-12. Eleven of her victories have been on synthetic tracks, which set her up well to race in this year’s Breeders’ Cup, held at Santa Anita for the Cigar wins the 1996 Arlington Citation Challenge carrying top weight of 130 pounds “Einstein got away with murder. We don’t give five pounds to horses like him. He slipped in. Good for him; bad for us” Bill Mott second consecutive year. The wisdom of holding racing’s World Series on a synthetic surface for the second straight year – an obvious disadvantage for great dirt horses – is dubious and will likely keep America’s top horse this summer, the brilliant filly Rachel Alexandra, out of the Breeders’ Cup. For the first time in racing history, trainers have three different surfaces to choose from: dirt, turf and synthetics, be they Pro-Ride, Cushion, Polytrack or Tapeta. Evaluating that third surface and its effects on training, racing, handicapping and betting will take time. But with true handicap racing for North America’s top horses on the endangered species list, the weight allowances for weight-for-age stakes have never been more important. “I’ve been in the game all my life,” Huffman said. “This is a third surface. It’s certainly going to change how racing secretaries write weight allowances. You have to have tons of data over a long period of time. It’s tough. This Turf Classic is a perfect example. I was thinking ‘Grade 1 turf.’ I should have been thinking “Grade 1 synthetic.” Racing secretaries are left on their own dealing with this added variable. “Everyone is different,” said New York Racing Association Racing Secretary P.J. Campo, who writes races for all three NYRA tracks: Robbins, who has also been the racing secretary at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. He was delighted when nine other fillies and mares entered against Zenyatta in the Hirsch. And even though three of them would scratch, Robbins was happy. That still left a field of seven. “I didn’t think we’d get seven horses,” Robbins said. This year, the Hirsch was run weight-forage. “We’ve changed,” Robbins said. “We changed some of our graded stakes this summer. There’s been a push on a national level to get more weight-for-age races.” Is that good for racing? “It’s certainly better for the better horses because they don’t get weighted out of races,” Robbins said. “That’s been the push of many people the last few years.” Robbins wrote in two weight allowances for the Hirsch, which assigned three-year-olds 119 pounds and older fillies and mares 123: “Non-winners of a Grade 1 at a mile or over in 2009 allowed two pounds,” and “non-winners of a Grade 2 at a mile or over in 2008 allowed four pounds.” Thus did Zenyatta and her stablemate Life Is Sweet carry 123 pounds and the other five fillies and mares 119 each. “If it had been a handicap, Zenyatta would have carried a lot more,” Robbins said. As it was, Zenyatta was life and death to edge Anabaa’s Creation by a head, spotting that rival four pounds. That made Zenyatta 12-for-12. Eleven of her victories have been on synthetic tracks, which set her up well to race in this year’s Breeders’ Cup, held at Santa Anita for the Cigar wins the 1996 Arlington Citation Challenge carrying top weight of 130 pounds “Einstein got away with murder. We don’t give five pounds to horses like him. He slipped in. Good for him; bad for us” Bill Mott second consecutive year. The wisdom of holding racing’s World Series on a synthetic surface for the second straight year – an obvious disadvantage for great dirt horses – is dubious and will likely keep America’s top horse this summer, the brilliant filly Rachel Alexandra, out of the Breeders’ Cup. For the first time in racing history, trainers have three different surfaces to choose from: dirt, turf and synthetics, be they Pro-Ride, Cushion, Polytrack or Tapeta. Evaluating that third surface and its effects on training, racing, handicapping and betting will take time. But with true handicap racing for North America’s top horses on the endangered species list, the weight allowances for weight-for-age stakes have never been more important. “I’ve been in the game all my life,” Huffman said. “This is a third surface. It’s certainly going to change how racing secretaries write weight allowances. You have to have tons of data over a long period of time. It’s tough. This Turf Classic is a perfect example. I was thinking ‘Grade 1 turf.’ I should have been thinking “Grade 1 synthetic.” Racing secretaries are left on their own dealing with this added variable. “Everyone is different,” said New York Racing Association Racing Secretary P.J. Campo, who writes races for all three NYRA tracks: Saratoga, Belmont Park and Aqueduct. “Everyone writes their own conditions within their own timeframes. I go back two months as far as my regular allowances to get weight off. When I start writing my conditions for the spring, I look at what’s going on in the winter in California and at Gulfstream. It’s very difficult to pin down. There’s going to be certain horses that fall through the cracks.” And what of synthetics? NYRA’s three tracks offer dirt and turf racing only. “What has made it difficult is synthetic,” Campo said. “I count synthetic as dirt. If you wanted to get specific, you could. But you don’t want to jump the gun. It’s difficult to start writing a third set of conditions. In New York, we don’t get a lot of synthetic horses running on dirt. That could change.” It won’t change quickly at Arlington Park, where horses race on Polytrack or turf. “I haven’t changed the way I weight races because of synthetics,” Racing Secretary Kevin Greely said in August. “If it’s a handicap, you might take it into consideration.” Robbins is reluctant to change conditions at Del Mar: “We’ve shied away from that. We don’t designate specific surfaces. Right now, there’s a very strong belief that races on synthetics are very similar to turf.” Others are skeptical. How could anyone know for sure after just a few years of synthetics, which seem to change at different times of the year depending on temperature and climate? Remember, there isn’t one specific type of synthetic surface being used by racetracks, but several. It seems more likely that, eventually, racing secretaries will have to deal with that difference. “That’s coming,” Huffman said. “I’ve written a couple allowance races on dirt and put in a money clause on a non-synthetic surface with allowances. There was a good synthetic horse out there who wouldn’t have been eligible to run in one of our allowance races. We called the horse’s trainer and let him know about the clause, but he didn’t enter the horse. It’s hard to fill allowance races. I’m trying to gather up as many horses as I can. “In my mind, we have three surfaces in the country. It used to be two. The way we do things are going to change a little bit.” But they will change. Racing secretaries are going to have to deal with the effects of a third surface. “I think they’ve got to throw that into the equation,” Mott said. “They have to think about it, sure. It’s a whole different ballgame.” ■

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Bill Heller (14 October 2009 - Issue Number: 14 )

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