Genuine question maybe Craig or Louis can assist me. I see many scratching because of change of surface today. Now I get it that some horses may not act on the Poly, but many of these scratchings have not been on the Poly before so in theory the trainer would not know how they perform on it. Is the Polytrack more prone to horses getting hurt?
OTA
I am still learning the surface, so maybe Craig has a more complete answer.
Overall though, I think that the following would influence the scratchings-
1)The draw bias of the Poly is worse than the Turf.
2)The horse has not galloped well on the Poly.
3)Another horse or other horses in the race will gain advantage and therefore put you in a position to run a worse race than anticipated.
4)With some horses, a poor run could make it very difficult to get into the next turf race.
As i say, just my opinion but I am still learning over here.
I just looked and see that only 10 of the scratchings were for change of surface. That's from 124 carded runners. Obviously there are some eliminations (such elimination system as I must still learn), for the reason that the course runs with smaller fields.
Last edit: 7 years 8 months ago by louisg.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Sweet Coetzee, Bokked, the fantasy, kt6747, Over the Air
Hi OTA, basically 10% have scratched today and 3 of those look like they were left in to keep the race alive and not be abandoned. Most trainers ( and this was discussed at track yesterday morning) are very happy to run on the poly. Early on there was a resistance but now their are far fewer scratchings these days when there were as they realise that it is a very fair and consistent surface and horses pull up well after racing on it.
Topic Author
