We had just 5 races on the PSF track this week so I have grouped the 2 days racing together for this short piece. In truth, with the better action on the turf, I don't think we learned a great deal from these races. The PSF track is still officially being described as slow, yet as we discussed last week the times do not support that. We had a pair of 1,500 meter 3-year-old handicaps on Thursdays card, the upper part of the divide ran a time exactly equal to the course average, whilst the lower half of the divide were just 0.04s slower. Whilst these 2 races may work out as pieces of form, the fact that horses rated in the mid-30s were able to run these times would suggest that the "slow" description is a little bit pessimistic. I have put a copy of the ratings for the 5 races below. I don't think there were too many to take for the future but the obvious horse is Tremblant. Andre Fabre's 3-year-old has struggled to match his pedigree in his previous starts but the switch to an artificial surface did seem to help him settle and he dominated this 3-year-old handicap from a mark of 36-kilos. Those in behind brought some solid turf form into this race, but prior to this front running effort on the PSF, he hadn't looked like a particularly well handicapped horse and it is possible that the switch to the all-weather was the key. Shamardal does have a slightly higher strike rate on the PSF compared to the turf (17%) so there is perhaps a small clue to support this theory. Either way he produced a career best today, but he is only worth considering next time if he stays on the All-weather in my opinion.
