COMMENTARY : Checking Track Bias Can Be as Critical as Reading Race Form

The Hutcheson Stakes here attracted national attention because of the presence of several Kentucky Derby aspirants in the field, and racing fans who watched it on television might have thought they could draw some clear conclusions from the results.

Housebuster looked to be a very good horse--or at least a very good sprinter--in his victory. Smelly, the Maryland colt, showed with his fourth-place finish that he doesn’t belong at this level of competition. Rhythm, the favorite, looked dismal finishing seventh.

These conclusions might be totally valid. Or the evidence of the Hutcheson might be highly deceptive. It all depends on the way the observer views the nature of the Gulfstream Park racing strip.

Modern-day handicappers have become keenly conscious of the importance of the track bias--that is, the tendency of a racing surface to favor certain types of horses and hinder others. If, for example, a track consistently favors front-runners on the rail, a victory by such a speed horse and a loss by a wide stretch-runner have to be viewed within that context.

The existence of track biases had gone virtually unrecognized in racing until the 1970s. Books and articles never mentioned either the term or the concept.

To the best of my knowledge, the term “track bias” was coined by Steve Davidowitz, then a handicapper for the Daily Racing Form. I wrote about Davidowitz and the subject in my book, “Picking Winners,” published in 1975. Now, track biases are such a part of handicapping orthodoxy that it seems unthinkable horse players could ever have overlooked them.

Why do biases appear and disappear?

“The most common reason,” said John Passero, Laurel’s track superintendent, “is that you could have more or less material on the rail than on other parts of the track. If you have two inches of cushion on the rail and three inches on the rest of the track, the rail is going to be quick.”

Because the inside part of the track takes more pounding than the outside, Passero said, it is easily possible for the rail to become disadvantageous, too.

“The base of the track--the ‘pad’--might get nicked up, which is what happened at Pimlico last year,” Passero said. “A horse’s hoof goes through the cushion and gets to the pad, and he can’t get hold of anything.”

When such conditions exist, nobody puts up a sign saying: “The rail is bad today.” Indeed, track officials tend to dismiss suggestions their racing strip might be unfair. When Pimlico had the most notorious bias in America, General Manager Chick Lang insisted for years that the rail-favoring bias was a figment of horseplayers’ imaginations.

A handicapper shouldn’t generalize about a race track (for example, “Belmont Park favors stretch-runners”) because any track can change from day to day. It is necessary to watch each day’s races carefully and critically.

A track is even and normal if superior horses can win regardless of their style. If some races are won by front-runners on the rail and others are being won by horses who rally on the outside, no bias exists. Most of the time this will be the case.

If horses with a particular style seem to dominate, a handicapper still should not rush to conclusions. “People are too quick to jump on a bandwagon and say ‘speed is good’ when they see one or two front-runners win,” said Paul Cornman, one of New York’s top handicappers. “You have to look and see how the contenders are running.”

One key in watching races is to look at the way speed horses fare when they are engaged in a hard head-and-head battle. When two or more habitual front-runners fight for the lead in fast fractions, they will ordinarily tire and set up the race for a stretch-runner. But if they keep going--and the stretch-runners still can’t make any impact on the race--a bias is probably helping them.

If the rail is disadvantageous, horses will be consistently swooping to victory in the middle of the track. Even front-runners with uncontested early leads will be fading. When several horses are fighting for the lead, the one closest to the rail will be the first to drop out of contention.

When a handicapper concludes a bias exists, all of his decisions and judgments will be affected. The performance of every horse who runs on a biased track has to be viewed in the light of that bias.

When Capote won the 1986 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, for example, handicappers weren’t impressed because he was carried to the victory by a powerful speed-favoring bias at Santa Anita. They weren’t surprised when he never won a major race again.

When Swale was trounced in the 1983 Preakness, handicappers knew they could dismiss the loss because he had been parked four-wide on a rail-favoring Pimlico track. He promptly came back to win the Belmont Stakes against the same horses.

Of course, these observations are easy to make with hindsight, but biases are such elusive phenomena that a handicapper rarely will feel 100% certain of his conclusions. That is the case at Gulfstream. For almost every day of this meeting, the track has had a rail-favoring bias to a ridiculous degree. (Horses breaking from post position 12 are 1 for 119 at the meeting.)

On the day of the Hutcheson, however, a couple of horses did win on the outside. Did they give superior efforts to overcome the bias? Or had the bias become weaker or nonexistent that day? That’s the kind of subjective judgment with which handicappers regularly have to wrestle.

If the track was normal Saturday, Housebuster ran a terrific race to battle head and head in 44 2/5 for a half mile and still draw away to win the Hutcheson. Stalker ran pretty well to hold on for third place after such a duel. Smelly gave a disappointing performance because he was not able to gain in the stretch when the leaders were tiring.

But if a speed-favoring, rail-favoring bias existed (and I believe it did), the Hutcheson would look like a totally different race. Housebuster won because he was the beneficiary of the bias. Stalker wasn’t especially impressive. Rhythm’s loss still looks horrendous because he stayed on the rail and couldn’t do anything.

But Smelly was a victim of the bias--and Donald Miller’s ride. He was squeezed back early in the race so he couldn’t show his customary speed, and when Miller abandoned the rail to make a wide move, he was taking the horse to a part of the track where it was difficult to accelerate.

Under the circumstances, the Maryland colt gave a solid performance to lose by only four lengths. He may have run even better than the winner. That is a conclusion that seems to contradict the results of the race, but bias-oriented handicappers know appearances can be deceiving.