Fair Grounds handicapping roundup: Week of March 8

Inside speed bias

Remember when Todd Pletcher sent Intense Holiday from Florida to Fair Grounds to get away from what Pletcher felt was a prevailing speed bias on the Gulfstream main track? Intense Holiday won the Risen Star Stakes and validated Pletcher’s decision, but looking back, one wonders if Pletcher sent Intense Holiday from one speed-biased track to another.

There have been only a few days at this meet during which the main track was as overtly inside-speed-biased as, say, Fountain of Youth Day at Gulfstream, though there have indeed been a few: Feb. 14-15 leap to mind. But I know I have tweeted many race days since the first of the year about a potentially incipient main-track bias: The trend toward inside speed might not have fully developed into a full-blown bias on those cards, but the fact that I have so often found it worthy of mention suggests there has been something going on longer term than isolated incidences.

This really hit home when I was interviewing trainer Tom Amoss regarding Delaunay’s participation in Saturday’s Duncan Kenner. I mentioned that Amoss must have been pleased that Delaunay had drawn post 2 and was outside the rail-drawn super-pace horse Heitai. On the contrary, Amoss protested: Heitai could easily be long gone as the fastest speed from the rail.

Amoss has been stabling at Fair Grounds for decades.

“I’ve never seen the track as biased as it’s been recently,” he said. “It’s not every single race, but a lot of the time, when a closer wins, it’s when they overcome the bias.”

These remarks came after two days of wet-track racing last Monday and Tuesday, during which speed was undoubtedly good, but everyone knows Amoss is a sharp observer, and I don’t think his take on the bias is coming out of left field.

Just look at the last four-day racing week, from Feb. 27 to last Sunday. There were 28 dirt races during the period, and 16 of them were won by front-runners. Pressers and stalkers accounted for 12 main-track wins. You will notice the absence of a single true closing stretch runner.

“Look, I’ve benefitted from the bias in several cases, too,” Amoss said. “A perfect example is Ten to Midnight.”

The Amoss-trained Ten to Midnight ran in the fifth race Feb. 28. At odds of 5-1, he set what should have been a killing route tempo, 23.14 seconds for the first quarter-mile, and that while under some pressure, but no closers came, and Ten to Midnight won by almost a length. There were nine main-track races that day: Speed horses won seven of them.

Amoss pays heed to such things but said he didn’t know that the track was being maintained differently from in the past. Often in cases of long-period bias, maintenance procedures – unless they’re radical – won’t change much anyway. What’s important for handicappers and bettors to decide is whether this is a trend they want to recognize during the last few weeks of this meet. And to a great extent, that’s probably already happening. I have noticed many horses in recent weeks bet to lower-than-expected odds for no obvious reason other than they possess early speed.

Good stretch for Eramia

What a solid February for a solid jockey, Richard Eramia. Eramia won 19 races during the month, second only to leading rider Rosie Napravnik, who booted home 22 winners, and tied with second-leading rider James Graham. Eramia (ably represented by agent Rick Mocklin) has somewhat stark splits between dirt and turf: He went 2 for 29 on grass during the month compared with 17 for 89 on dirt. But, of course, those stats beg the question of what makes a “turf rider.” Some would answer, “turf horses.”

On the other side of the coin: The Al Stall barn just cannot snap out of a meet-long funk. Stall predicted in November that he wouldn’t have an especially strong winter, but he’s on track to have his lowest Fair Grounds win total in a local career dating to 1992. This is an eminently capable outfit, and I never would have expected such a prolonged lull. There’s a major wake-up coming at some point in the near future, but at this late date in the meet, that might not happen until the stable goes to Kentucky.