There's not enough water in those tankers to keep that track constant on a dry day.
They weren't moderate fractions. Anyone who says that is wrong. In reality, based on the track speed, they were slightly quick fractions.
Yes, it was a slow, tiring track. You can even see it in the next race afterwards when a bunch of solid OCL 75K horses near a 24/24/24.5 pace completely quit after 6 furlongs when they needed only 1 1/16.