TGJB -
So I watched the Changing Track Speeds presentation (again, I\'d gone through it before, but in deference to you and my unreliable memory, I watched it again). To sum up (for those who don\'t want to spend the 22 minutes), there are three things that can change energy return/track speed:
1. Track composition (e.g., sand v. clay), which generally wouldn\'t change during the day.
2. Compaction, which can be affected by track maintenance (including sealing, flaking, water trucks rolling over the track, etc.) or by horses running over the track.
3. Moisture content, which can be increased by rain or track maintence (watering) and decreased by evaporation (which varies in rate depending on weather conditions, amount of sunlight, shadows, etc.). Especially on the high-sand-content tracks that prevail today, loss of moisture tends to slow a track.
The presentation is convincing (at least to me) that a track can change speeds during the day in the absence of rain and that different portions of the track (e.g., one- v. two-turn races) may have different speeds.
I did not, however, see anything (and certainly not a zillion things) that would have caused a track to get faster and then slower within a span of 80 minutes, as your variants suggest happened in races 2-4 on BC Day, in the absence of track maintenance. We\'ve talked a bit about wind. Do you think you built a pace effect into the figures for Juvenile Fillies (as your exchange with SP suggests)? Is there something I\'m missing?
BitPlayer
