i just know that everyone was thrilled with hollywood, but not near as much with del mar.

i just hope oaklawn stays with their surface, churchill, saratoga, belmont as well....
keeneland probably needs to do something with their surface as well...of course their dirt track was showing a huge bias as well....

i just want to see a surface that is kind to no one particular running style. get rid of the bias!

Clearly, less Euro horses shipped to California because of the much longer journey and the warm weather. Most are turf horses anyway, so I don't think the surface had a whole lot to do with it.

I can understand the thought that tracks should be fair. However, I feel speed, and let us not forget we are talking about racing, should have some advantage. At a minimum, they should have the advantage of being able to establish position and make others go around them. That advantage has been turned into a big time negative at some of these places. Why reward slow horses?

not just euros, a lot of east coasters didn't want to go. they didn't like the track, and how hard it was. euro turfers generally don't do well, altho this was the year high chaparral and johar dead-heated. but it was only the cali connections who were happy to have the bc out there that year.
next year will be the first time on an artificial surface for the bc, i guess we'll see how it plays out...but i'm thinking you'll see more attendance by euros. after all, if for some reason the races get rained off, they won't have shipped all that way to scratch, they'll have a familiar surface to run on.

don't get me wrong tho, i'm 'old school' and was not thrilled to see dirt decried and replaced. but it's there now, so i just hope they get it RIGHT.

that's right, no one should get a early or late boost. the horses should decide the outcome, not the track.

Our Poly often gives the advantage to the speed horses, so why should it be any different over there? It is quite often the speed that gets the advantage, and then there are some days when the winners come from off the speed. It all depends on the weather and how it is prepared on the day.

If you're saying it isn't helping the speed horses, it is because it isn't being prepared for them. Maybe they are harrowing too deep, and making it hard for the speed horses to maintain those quick fractions?

The beauty of Poly is that is can be altered to make it fair on most horses no matter what the weather conditions.

wire to wire winner stats (SPEED) thru 8/16/07

Six furlongs
Saratoga 7/38, 18%,,,,DelMar 12/59, 20%

6.5-7 furlongs
Saratoga 2/13, 15%,,,,DelMar 7/29, 24%

1 1/16 – 1 1/8 miles
Saratoga 4/24, 17%,,,,DelMar 1/14, 7%



:rolleyes:

I was happy to see the CA tracks get synthetic, as I considered them notoriously biased in favor of speed. I was tired of seeing horses come out of CA and not being able to reproduce their racing form elsewhere (false speed).

I like the artificial surfaces, as they do what you want, they level the playing field. True speed can hold, false speed stops like a rock, closers have an honest chance, stalkers have to have that last good burst to pass. More of a tactical race, with horses that have to be prepared, than simply "gun 'em and go".

i like the cushion track better than poly.

hope to see more tracks go to it then poly.

As with all stats, they can be slanted any way the presenter wants to fit his opinion. Obviously, the horses at Saratoga are running much faster early than those at Delmar. I'm just trying to keep things fair and balanced. That said, Saratoga certainly hasn't been very kind to speed the last few years, and a lot of it has to do with the new superintendent.

This from Joe Kristufek in Sunday's (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald re: Polytrack.

"Polytrack has proven safer for racehorses, but not for jockeys. When a spill occurs on Polytrack, riders hit the dense surface hard, and since there's little slide to it, its nearly impossible for them to drop and roll."

In the past week or so, AP has seen Penalba go down in a bad spill; still in critical condition I believe. Israel Ocampo and Uriel Lopez went down in a spill on Friday and Ocampo suffered multiple facial injuries which required surgery while Lopez suffered a broken thumb and bruised ribs.

All i can say is that i'm shocked. I'm sick and tired of saying it, but if the track wants a speed bias, they can prepare the Poly to give a speed bias. The fact that the speed is suffering on the Poly suggests two things: 1. The tracks don't want the surface to favour speed 2. The tracks cannot prepare the surface properly to know what is going to happen with the races.

Over here before each race day the clerk of the course will usually give his/her idea on how the track will ride and whether it is likely to suit the speed or closers. With such changeable weather that we suffer in England, the track has to be prepared differently and that changes what horses that it favours.

Who is the person that is in charge of the surface at the track (i.e. what is his/her title). They should be the ones that should be able to tell the betting public what the track will be riding like. They are obviously not doing it though.

From what i have read on different threads so far, you American's are very hard to please. You seem to want the moon but aren't preapred to go and get it yourself.

Duscuss the problems that you are having with the tracks, speak to the person/persons in charge of the surface and ask what it is going to be riding like.

One question. How long has the surface been installed at Del Mar? Don't forget that Poly does take a while to settle in and become consistant.

you hit on it, its a new surface over here and people don't have sufficient experience with it yet like they do in Europe, and the other key point is its hard to please everyone over here. We excel at whining.

U are kidding right? The Europeans dominated the turf racing that year. Six Perfections won the Mile, Islington led a sweep in the F/M Turf and in addition to High Chaparral dead heating for the win in the Turf, Falbrav ran third.

The American Airlines commercial that they are showing over here backs you up there. I think it says "we have flown more Americans than any other airline...... and if we can keep them happy.............."

Great commercial.

sorry for going off topic.

Let me ask you this, when it first started over there, were people bitching up a storm?

No, and i'm being honest there.

I remember they had a trial raceday where they invited all of the trainers that trained within about 3hours of Lingfield to have at least one runner in the eight (i think) races that they put on.

I didn't go, but my father took a couple of horses there and he said it seemed "magic". The jocks loved it and so did the trainers. Ofcourse, a few of the big trainers didn't like it at first but it didn't take many months for them to be running their horses on the surface.

I know our races aren't all to do with speed unlike yours, but what i have seen from both Lingfield and Wolverhampton (Wolverhampton especially), the Poly can and does favour the horses on the speed now and again. If your tracks can get it right, which takes time, i'm sure the speed can be favoured on the surface.

Wolverhampton is more like an American track, Lingfield has a much longer straight (stretch) so it gives more time for horses that are closing off a strong pace.

Unfortunately, as patriotic as I am, that's true, indeed.

What is interesting to me is how the complaints about each track (or lack of them) vary by location. California seems to have more complaints than anybody, including Turfway (who suffered an extremely hard winter this last season) - Arlington virtually no complaints, and the temps this summer are much hotter and more humid than at Del Mar.

I don't know if that can be attributed to the individualization in the composition of the installations at these different tracks, or not.

Keeneland has their Poly fast enough to keep impressing buyers at the 2-year-old sales.

This may be one of the stupidest things that I have seen yet

Exactly, he is nuts. If you saw how he fell when this happened it is understandable why he is all jacked up.

Oh, my scientific mind loves it, and senses opportunity here - let's do a controlled study!

We'll assemble all the casual turf writers together, get them going at 16 m/s(2), and drop them from a height of 6-7 feet onto Polytrack. We can measure the distance they "roll" :)

As an aside, I've seen other jocks comment in the press that they prefer falling on it, versus dirt. Having fallen myself onto turf, sand, wood chips, and into fences - looks inviting enough to me :D

That someone spent time thinking of a theory that would suggest that polytrack would be more unsafe for riders to land on is troubling.

If Kristufek had any small knowledge regarding the biomechanics of the surface, and why it is much safer for 470kg animals striking it during a race at 35-40mph on a slightly concave 4-5-inch round foot, he wouldn't have written anything so silly regarding what happens when 115 pound men strike it at the same speed.

When he publishes his opinion that, "Polytrack has proven safer for racehorses, but not for jockeys", stating it as a fact, unfortunately alot of people are going to believe anything they read, and take it as inviolate truth.

No surface is going to be safe to land on head first going 35 mph and if you get stepped on it is not going to matter much either way.

no, i was saying they weren't happy with it being out there with the heat, and the hard track. i know who won it. don't you remember the weeks leading up to the bc, when a lot over there were saying they weren't coming? you think johar could have dead-heated with HC any where else?!

Getting back to the comment that Americans are always complaining or whining or whatever was said, it should be pointed out comparing our synthetic racing to Europe's is ridiculous.

We Americans were "sold" on the idea that this would be dirt racing, just safer. The Euros had nothing to compare it to, since they've never had conventional dirt. They were getting a chance to race in the winter, when they wouldn't otherwise. We've had winter racing here for years. And while Poly makes sense for a mostly winter track like Turfway, its plain stupid for tracks like Santa Anita and Keeneland to have it. Almost all the horses with 5 or more races here have established dirt form. When you see a horse like Sun Boat become a graded stakes winner on dirt, or Student Council absolutely bury Lava Man, you know there's something wrong. Its not just the running styles that people don't like; its the lack of transferability of conventional dirt form to synth that is bizarre. And while the strong acceleration of early speedballs and deep closers were admired, it appears those styles will give way to the "preferred" one-paced grinding style that wins so many synth races.

Give me Mountaineer, Ellis, Hawthorne any day over the carpet tracks.

Is the safety and longevity of the horses of any concern to you?

He could have dead heated with him at Delta Downs on the dirt probably. Anywhere else and he gets crushed.

I don't think anybody has claimed artificial surfaces will cure breeders breeding horses that can't stand up to the rigors of racing.

Let's take a group of completely sound and race-trained horses. Would you like to see the surface they race upon improved to be safer for them, to be less likely to cause injury?

Race horses often wear front shoe toe-grabs. Enables them to grab the track (obviously). If they don't wear them, they generally don't run as fast, as their footing may not be as "sure" on the track. Some horses may seem to slip and slide around a bit, which can vary from track to track according to the surface.

The height of toe grabs are measured in millimeters. A millimeter is very tiny (it's very roughly 1/25 of an inch). "Regular" toe grabs are 6.4 millimeters in height. "High" toe grabs are 9.5 millimeters in height.

These are relatively tiny physical differences to the eye, especially compared to the size of the horse wearing them.

If you were betting on a certain horse at Mountaineer repeatedly, you might be surprised if he suddenly couldn't seem to get ahold of the track, and put in a bad performance, if he ran up the track? What if you learned his trainer didn't use his usual toe grabs for that effort?

There is a model rule to ban toe grabs over 4 millimeters in height.

Would you vote in favor of this rule, seeing that the horse you bet on may suddenly, without the regular or high toe grabs he's used to, flounder around and run up the track?

It has been found (by a researcher at UC Davis) that a race horse wearing high toe grabs is 16 times more likely to suffer a catastrophic breakdown. That's due to the toe grabs alone - not any predisposing factors.

Should a ban on toe grabs greater than 4 millimeters be supported?

How will gamblers react, if this rule is put into place universally, when certain horses who always "ran well" now can't seem to pull off the same performance repeatedly under the new rules?

Should we rather just keep the high toe grabs, and, "try to make the dirt surfaces safer" ?

How would you feel if you owned a race horse, and your trainer regularly put high toe grabs on your horse?

Oh, no, I'm sure the polytrack is at fault. The jock could have rolled out of the way of the other horses in the field if the track were dirt. I know it's true, I read it in the Daily Herald.

i've read several studies on toe grabs, i think they should be done away with. was not happy when woodbine caved and allowed them after initially saying NO. chrb has been back and forth on it. they should not be--but part of the problem would be owners who have horses who run on them, and don't want to do away with them--which makes you wonder just how much 'horse' is in those horsemen! and how much is $$$.

I have yet to see one of these studies and until I do I remain skeptical about their claims. I know a few real horseman that not only like toegrabs but regularly use mud caulks even on dry tracks. 2 guys you may have heard of. Jerkens and Zito.

Sigh ... I'm just going to have to get you subscriptions to the Equine Veterinary Journal and American Journal of Veterinary Research so you can keep up with it all! :D

PS - always bet the horse wearing mud calks

Where do they get their data?

Contessa almost ALWAYS uses mud caulks, especially on the inner track. I asked him about it and he said it's the only way the horses can grip on the half-frozen dirt in the winter. Makes sense to me.

From research. They are both peer-reviewed journals. You do some research, write up your findings, then send it in, and hope it gets accepted for publication (if it has something to offer). The editorial board of specialists in your field review it, if it passes their scrutiny (they often send it back to you for revision) then it gets published, then everyone else in your field can write letters to the editor telling how your conclusions were in error, your methodology was suspect, etc. If it survives challenge as to the validity of the findings and/or conclusion (people often disagree on the conclusions to be drawn from valid research datum), it becomes accepted as part of the current scientific knowledge base.

Or you could read the Daily Herald.

If you read the original work by Watson and Crick as published, it's alot more fun to look in the next issue of the magazine. There are a couple of letters to the editor questioning the validity of their conclusion regarding the double-helix structure of DNA. Fighting scientists are fun :D