Friday, November 13, 2026

Track & Meet Notes · No. 1

How Churchill Downs is playing this week

Churchill Downs supplies ten of the races gathered for today’s card, and seven of them carry a filed pick: Races 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9, all on dirt. Before a reader uses any of those picks, the sheet prints a trend line for the race — a short read on how this track has played lately, grouped by surface and distance type. This first track note sets out those reads for Churchill Downs, with the source and the sample behind each one.

The bias file checks sources in a fixed order: our own settled results from the last 7 days first, then published 14-day trends, then our last 30 days, then 30- and 60-day published trends. A source needs a minimum sample before it can carry a line — 8 races for our 7-day read. Where the sources disagree, the sheet prints the split. It does not blend them into one lean.

One group carries a lean. In dirt routes, stalkers — horses that sit off the early pace and move before the closers arrive — won 86% of the 8 races in our 7-day sample, with closers taking the other 14% and early speed taking none. Posts 4–6 supplied 50% of the winners. The longer window points the same way at a lower rate: over our last 30 days, stalkers won 69% of 17 dirt routes. The two windows agree on direction. They do not agree on size, and the 7-day sample sits at the minimum the file allows, so the sheet prints the lean at that size and no larger.

The note touches today’s card in three places:

• Race 3, one mile on dirt, is the only filed dirt route today. It is the one race where the stalker lean applies directly.
• Races 1, 5, 6, 8, and 9, dirt sprints, plus Race 2 at seven and a half furlongs, carry the sprint read. That read has no lean: in 16 settled races the wins split across all three running styles, so the trend line gives a sprint reader no style to favour and no style to cross out.
• Races 4, 7, and 10, on turf, were gathered today and file no pick under the sheet’s turf rules. Their trend lines still print above, because a reader should see how the course played even where the sheet stands aside.

What would change this read is new settled races. The dirt-route lean rests on 8 races. A week in which early speed starts winning those races lowers the stalker share and removes the lean. The turf-sprint read rests on a published 60-day window because our own 7-day sample for that group holds one race, below the minimum. It stays the published read until our own settled sample reaches 8 races and takes its place at the front of the order.