Warm autumn leads to more turf racing

STICKNEY, Ill. – Wednesday is Nov. 11, and the high temperature is forecast to be about 60 degrees, which is way above normal in Chicago. This has been one of the warmest autumns on record, and that’s good news for the Hawthorne turf course, which in this unusually temperate season will last longer into this fall-winter Hawthorne meet than typically would be expected.

Through Saturday, Hawthorne had conducted 49 grass races, and after Tuesday’s card, the track will have run as many races on turf (51) as it did during the entire 2014 fall-winter meet, when grass racing ceased in mid-November. There were only 49 grass races in 2013, and Hawthorne is on track to at least equal the 68 grass races run in 2012.

That’s good news since average field size on turf at this meet – as is the case all over – is running well above the standard on dirt, though dirt races have filled surprisingly well, too, considering that average daily overnight purses at this meet are in the $120,000 range. Through Saturday, Hawthorne was averaging 8.15 starters per dirt race and 9.20 per turf race. That’s exactly the same number of turf starters per race as the track averaged at the last two fall-winter meets, while field size on dirt is down only slightly from the 8.21 that Hawthorne averaged a year ago.

All the field-size trends would point to betting handle holding firm, but that hasn’t been the case at this meet, with total handle through Nov. 1 down about 16 percent from the same period a year ago, according to general manager John Walsh. Walsh attributed at least part of the handle decline to changes at Television Games Network, which is airing the races from more major tracks this fall than it was a year ago, when the racing network hadn’t yet merged with Horse Racing Television.

Despite solid field sizes, favorites have been winning at an unusually high rate at this meet, especially on grass. Those 9.2 starters per turf race somehow have yielded nearly 50 percent winning favorites, with the chalk coming home in 24 of 49 grass races through Saturday.

The overall strike rate of favorites at this meet is 43 percent, well above the established par in general and at Hawthorne fall-winter meets in particular. Favorites won 35 percent of races during the 2014 meet, 33 percent in 2013 (when Hawthorne averaged only 7.92 starters per race), and 33 percent in 2012. One factor spurring the change is the success of owner Bill Stiritz and his private trainer, Scott Becker, who lead the meet with 16 winners, nearly all of whom have been heavily favored.

Redshirt returns in dirt route

ThistleDown, Fairmount, Hawthorne – the mighty Godolphin operation, through the arm of trainer Eoin Harty, has crept into venues one never would have imagined this year. Harty already has started nine horses at the Hawthorne meet, and there’s another in the featured fifth race Wednesday, a first-level dirt-route allowance.

Like all the local Godolphin runners, Redshirt has plenty of pedigree as a daughter of Distorted Humor and an A.P. Indy mare, but if horses like this are running at venues like this, they either are slow developers or lacking ability. The jury still is out on which better applies to Redshirt. She got three tries in Southern California last year at 2, was off from October to July, and actually won fairly nicely the second time after a layoff in a Polytrack sprint at Arlington. That was Aug. 7, and Redshirt has not raced since, but she’s stretching out to a two-turn trip that she might actually prefer, and after a spotty late-summer work pattern, she has drilled three times since Oct. 6 over the Hawthorne main track.

Of course, Becker and Stiritz also have an entrant, Oh Wise One, the 5-2, rail-drawn morning-line favorite with Chris Emigh named, but this is a turf and synthetic horse who never has started on a dry dirt surface. The pick to win her second race in a row is Jamie’s Girl, whose trainer, Mike Reavis, has gotten 12 of 16 runners at this meet to finish third or better.