Arson Squad in the Meadowlands Cup

[covelj70]

Arson Squad winning the Meadowlands Cup last night will only fuel the debate on the board here about Poly vs. Dirt Figures.

His poly figures were much slower than several others dirt figures coming into the race.

I finally wised up and used him in my pick 3\'s and pick 4\'s after seeing a number of others jump up making the similar dirt to poly move.

There have been alot of great theories offered on the board as to why this happens.

For my money, I am going with the idea that you need to be alot fitter to run on the poly because it\'s a much more tiring track than dirt and so therefore the analogy would be that a horse running a dirt race for the first time has ankle weights taken off.  One of the trainers we use swears this is the case and that it effects horses equally going both way (ie. hurting from dirt to poly and helping from poly to dirt, all else being equal with the horses preference for the surface).

I think it\'s going to hurt Big Brown in the Classic not having worked over the poly.  At least Curlin will have breezed on the track ahead of time.

[NoCarolinaTony]

I have been in the camp early on.

I am in total agreement with you.

NCT

[covelj70]

Hah, this is funny.

I was there last night (my idea of a romantic dinner/date out with my wife).

Was a fun night and Arson Squad helped the cause.

I agree about the opportunities that synthetics provide.  This Breeders Cup is going to be more interesting than many think.

It\'s usually difficult to rule out many horses in any given BC race but those who aren\'t fit enough or who have shown not to like it can be thrown out this year and that could help the cause.

At any rate, it\'s a better angle than what I used at Santa Anita last time around for the Breeders Cup which was that the Euros wouldn\'t be acclimated to the heat...yeah, that was a great idea...moron.

[jimbo66]

Personally, I hate redboarding, but I guess I will pile on here.  But after getting my hat handed to me a number of times with these poly to dirt horses, I finally caught on as well with ARson Squad last night.  he ahd a \"0\" or \"1\" on dirt last year, then started the polycrap races and started running 2\'s and 3\'s which didn\'t look competitive against a couple of the faster ones last night.  But when you factor in that \"bunched figures\" stuff we have talked about innumberable times on this board, you could easily extrapolate the horse running at least a \"0\" on dirt and when you add first time Dutrow, it made is very likely.  4-1 was more than fair.