The Churchill Downs turf course if officially rated "good" for the Friday Breeders' Cup card. One would think that with more than three inches of rain measured on the Churchill rain gauge between Wednesday night and Friday morning, and with cold, damp, drizzly conditions today, this course would be soft. But there are some mitigating factors at work, and having walked around the turf this morning just before 10:00, I'll say that the official designation isn't outlandish.

Overseas turf experts, such as Michael Prosser, clerk of the course at Newmarket, were out on the Churchill sod Friday and were amazed at how well it had taken the rain. One European horseman with a going stick termed the course good to soft, soft in places on the European ratings system.

First, the turf course here is sand-based. Think of what happens to a beach when it rains: the sand compacts and tightens. Track superintendent Jamie Richardson, who has decades of experience, says because of that the local course might turn yielding but not properly soft during wet periods. Churchill also has a good drainage system on this course: it's not just track maintenance employees that say the course drains well, but veteran horsemen here, too. There are 66 drainage tubes set up around the course and the maintenance crew started sucking water out of them using a pump yesterday afternoon.

Also - the temporary rail was taken down yesterday afternoon exposing a 25-foot (or thereabouts) swath of grass that hasn't been used since June. All the turf training this week has taken place far outside that fresh ground. The dogs, orange cones around which horses must travel during training, have been set up near the crown of this cambered track and that is the turf through which you have been watching them train every morning. The ground there drains slower than the inner part of the course, according to track-maintenance officials, and moreover has gotten chewed up from training.

The inner part of the course that has been saved for the Breeders' Cup is in much better shape. Those lanes were rolled twice late Thursday and figure to hold together better than the paths over which training has taken place - for now, at least. The looming question for me is how this course, which doesn't have deep roots and appears, in the words of trainer John Gosden, to be loose, is going to hold up after a bunch of turf races. Gosden has special concern because his star filly Enable runs in the BC Turf. There are three grass races carded today, then three more tomorrow before the Turf, the last of the BC grass races. And by then the turf might look and feel considerably different than it does now. 

One final note: If I were a jockey today I would definitely not be sticking close to the hedge, especially along the backstretch, which gets much less sun than other parts of the course and tends to always be softer.