The controversy about Polytrack, the "fake" racing surface that is all the rage in the thoroughbred world, continues, mostly among handicappers. Martin Collins, the inventor of the concoction, according to internet sources, wasn't thinking much of how horses would be traditionally handicapped as he took five years to develop the high-tech surface. Collins was engrossed in the science of it all, which is a "highly sophisticated manufacturing process that has every particle coated with wax" and a "level horizontal drainage system, which differs from the cambered vertical systems, which can cause huge variance in going and results in consistency and gives the horse the confidence to perform to its best." The jury of handicappers, however, is still out on this: "[Polytrack] gives the horse the confidence to perform to its best."

Polytrack may very well be saving horses' lives all over the globe. In England and France horses that have never set foot on dirt now race on Collins' surface at Newmarket, Epsom, North Yorkshire, Chantilly, Maison Lafitte, Lingfield Park and Wolverhampton . And in the U.S. the Polytrack era began in the land of bluegrass, at Turfway Park in Kentucky. Keeneland followed by installing it.

The most recent Keeneland meet furthered the seriousness of doubt among players as to how even a keel Polytrack makes the going. The fake surface was not producing a level-playing field, according to many major handicappers, because, for one, it was not allowing speed to hold. Wire-to-wire races were rare; horses on the lead were tanking in the stretch. It became so obvious that things were not going normally that the jockeys began to rate their charges early, cruising along at turtle-like fractions so that their mounts were full of stretch-run. It appeared that, as one jockey said, "it comes down to what you have left in the stretch." And the distances didn't matter. The routes were crawling and the sprints were crowded because no jockey wanted to lead the pack. One public handicapper said, "You have to have an exceptional horse to take a race wire to wire here." Of course some did and handicappers made special notes of those performers.

One handicapper was so astonished at how the Polytrack was treating runners that he said, "It is going to come to the point where you handicap horses three ways: for turf, for dirt and for Polytrack." But I don't believe that is the way to look at this. In fact, it seems to me that handicappers are missing something here, something that handicappers should not be astonished about or unable to cope with when it comes to evaluating horses' performances. That something is bias. And the factor known as bias has little to do with Martin Collins' revolutionary landscape.

Bias Unite Us

Tracks utilizing Polytrack are always considered to be "fast," regardless of weather conditions. But even a fast "natural" track can develop a bias, and most of the time it does so mysteriously. And when a bias pops up, handicappers are not ready to complain about a level-playing field; they are ready to pounce on the matter, looking at it as an edge (until everyone catches on and it loses its potency). Polytrack may be producing a bias, but is it mysterious? This is the key: a natural-track bias is rarely consistent over a great period of time, but is Polytrack producing a consistent bias that is, dare I write this, reliable? Because a reliable bias is no enemy to a handicapper.

Some years back I was playing the races at my home track, Penn National. There was nothing synthetic about the surface at Penn National; it was better maintained than some of the lower-class horses running upon it. I began to notice, after some study, that horses racing on the rail during sprints were unable to maintain their speed in the stretch. Because these were cheap claimers there would seem to be nothing strange about that. However, speed, like water, seeks its own level among classes, so the fact that no sprinters could carry their leads beyond mid-stretch, in my opinion, was odd. As the betting public continued to wager upon the "speed" element, I backed off and began to support the mid-pack stalkers and I began to win on horses I gave chances to that I would have tossed out had I not believed I had found a bias. And I did this for as long as it appeared the bias existed. One night it was the mid-race stalker that could not make up ground to the horse in the lead that alerted me the bias was over. Indeed, the leaders mid-stretch began to hold on at the rail. The candy shop was closed.

But what happened at Keeneland or what may happen at other Polytrack-surfaced racetracks may be a 24/7 candy store, so to speak. If the bias-like condition that Polytrack sets is nothing mysterious, then what is the big deal whether it kills speed or favors strong stretch runs or eliminated any horse trying to gallop quickly on a turn? Certainly if any of the quirks that appear become a regular condition, a handicapper can adjust, can't he? Not only can he but he must, just as he is able to turn his handicapping strengths inside out in order to meet a condition that benefits any path on the track or any kind of horse.

Can any of you recall the great Del Mar "jet stream" of the 1980s? Because the track (ordinary, natural dirt, though it always looked very dark to me) was kind to horses that got slow starts due to leaving from outside post positions, many handicappers made contenders out of horses that would have no chance of winning on another track in the same circumstances. The results were win overlays and exactas like the 11-12, 8-11, 10-9 and 12-9, et al. Being unaware of this prejudice, there was no way to win at Del Mar those seasons. Nor was there an explanation for those of us who became aware of the skewed handicapping element.

So, accepting the conditions and never asking for an explanation, nor complaining about the mysterious circumstances, we sensationalized upon the bias and we altered our handicapping. This is what the jockeys at Keeneland were doing and what the handicappers should be doing when handicapping races on a synthetic surface. Regardless of what the Polytrack manufacturers claim, when things are as they appear to be, the handicapper needs to adjust.

Stop, Look and Record

Just as there is nothing new about how to deal with any bias, it is time to stop and study what is happening with the Polytrack surfaces and use those as the standards for estimating horses racing upon it. And, if these are not sudden changes, as the best of all biases always tends to be, then it makes little to no sense to fight the condition. If you can't beat 'em, so to speak, join 'em.

In any possible situation at any track, a smart handicapper addresses the size, shape and condition of the racetrack in order to make valuable decisions about choosing contenders. No one should handicap a turf race like they handicap a dirt race, right? Wrong. There could be specific situations — nuances and indigenous details — where a track's turf course should be assessed in the same manner as its dirt course. One needs to explore these details, study the characteristics that apply to the various area.

In the days of the Del Mar jet stream there were handicappers that swore that the track's characteristics were isolated conditions based upon the track's proximity to the ocean, and then made unsubstantiated reasons for the conditions due to the ocean tides. Whether this was the reason or not, the fact that Del Mar had individual characteristics that affected the racing dearly was a case in point that everyone needed to understand if they would ever play another racetrack. Certainly, even on the same circuit, one could not handicap races at Del Mar as they did at Hollywood Park or Santa Anita. This is also true since so many handicappers were sensative to the "horses-for-courses" angle, and were quick to wager on horses that could not seem to be productive at Del Mar but won confidently when they raced at Hollywood Park. And there were people who were convinced that Hollywood Park racing was affected by its proximity to LAX Airport. The track was directly in the path of many runways in the 1970s and early '80s; the noise and pollution factors, some thought, could interfere with a horse's performance.

No matter how you approach this, a Polytrack's performance profile needs attention and study, even from track to track. So the new Pennsylvania racetrack that offers the synthetic surface may and probably will play differently than Keeneland's surface; as will those synthetic surfaces at other tracks. Maybe it is always "fast" on a synthetic track, but maybe that doesn't mean much when it comes to how a horse performs. Only what proves to happen on that track, as the horses perform, as the particular details add up and as the results come in, race after race, will be what the handicapper has to deal with. And unless the revolutionary new surface changes from race to race, I trust that smart handicappers will figure out how to predict valuable performances in the new theater.