Santa Anita Cushion track claims it's first victim
 

Drill down today. He had to be euthanized. Story at DRF.

Sumitas may chime in here later if his mom lets him stay up late on a school night

U calling someone a mommas' boy is like me calling somone fat.

the bid must need his diapers changed

That might be the 3rd or 4th actually.

Diaper change?

call it the track or whatever but any time a horse breaks down it sucks....this one especially for me since I knew him as a baby.

Post of the day.

Polytrack needs its diaper changed, it **** the bed last winter in Florence and has continued to do so.

Sorry guys... it's not goin away...

Your arguments for the most part are pretty accurate, but IT'S NOT GOIN AWAY. Not at S.A., Del Mar, Arlington, or Presque Isle... but maybe Woodbine if you're lucky lol jk

Too Bad, I thought this had the potential to be a nice horse.

Sorry to hear that. I don't like the synthetics but will never understand the efforts people are going to here to make such a huge deal out of every breakdown on them.

I think it's more than that if the injury numbers are comparable to dirt racing at Santa Anita last year then we have quite a little problem here or 10 million poorly spent When the first workouts started coming back as a little fast I thought there might be an issue.

"The works in the morning have been a little quick," said Mike Harlow, Oak Tree's Director of Racing, " Bloodhorse

To me this translates into trouble if the surface is failing to deaden impact and slow times somewhat. We might have a bigger story than you think.

i agree. certainly wasn't this much attention dedicated to every breakdown when we only had two surfaces.
as for the money spent, it didn't come out of my pocket. as for the track, hopefully they will work at fixing any problems immediately, rather than waiting til meets end like del mar.
hollywood seemingly had no problems, perhaps everyone should be in touch with them.

Santa Anita may be playing with the surface a bit too much in an effort to keep a speed favoring track. We will see.

When you have a quarter inch of standing water on an all weather track after 1 rain, you have a major issue. ESPECIALLY when the track is uneven.

That was 1000% correct.
I was watching the SA cam on Saturday, when it rained in LA area, and was amazed that the entire rail area(paths 1 and 2) and a big chunk of the 7-8 path in the stretch were full of water.
The horses were working off the rail and still flying but you could see the splashing as if a little kid was jumping in puddles.

Then Sundays works were much slower than any other day in the past three weeks. Many horsemen complained of an uneven track.

It was almost like they didnt install the drainage system at SA.

Supposedly HP did not have any of the problems that SA had, and the # of workers and times of the works did not alter much.

1. California has FORCED those tracks to change to synthetic surfaces.
2. Everybody continually bitched about how SLOW the times were at Del Mar and what a joke the races were.
3. Everybody is bitching about how FAST the surface is at Santa Anita.

I liked dirt as much as the next guy (or girl).. but what can we do?

something is going on at SA and it's not good. 1/2 inch of rain should easily be handled by any all weather surface. ideally, it should make that surface even tighter but still safe. there is obviously a big problem with the drainage there and i would guess the amount of all weather poly over the asphalt is quite thin.

I wouldnt be shocked if the drainage wasnt installed correctly, or installed at all.

Maybe now we know why Joe Harper wouldnt water the DM track?

I would be hard pressed to think of man made (artificial) things that are better than their natural counterparts.

racetrack surfaces, even the dirt variety do not occur in nature. the dirt composition, drainage, base layering, banking, maintenance, etc, are all artificial. it is man who makes racetrack surfaces what they are.

leave aside the safety issue and say that its too early to be sure, synthetic tracks still handle weather better and are cheaper to maintain than dirt.

wow, really?

i thought all this time racetracks were built around natural racing surfaces!

i was hoping people would be able to realize that compared to 'artificial' surfaces, dirt and turf are one heck of a whole lot more natural.

and from what i've read, 'proper' maintenance of a synthetic surface really isn't all that much cheaper than dirt.

Drainage certainly seems like a problem if what i have read is true. Rain does indeed make the track faster but still safe, and we see a hell of a lot more rain than southern CA does!

I'm with sniper on this, i can't believe how much effort is being made about every break down since the synthetic surfaces came along. I've been watching US racing for a few years now, and in my eyes i used to see just as many break down then (if not more) as i see now that the synthetic surfaces have suffered.

Have these tracks not given long enough for the track to have 'settled in' do you think?

if you think about it, very little about the sport is natural.

Hmm...

Organic racetracks. I'm already counting the fiddy's and huneds.

True.

Is anything about this sport natural?

maybe we should feed horses big macs and mcnuggets.

Horses aren't safe no matter where they run or roam...

http://www.leaderherald.com/News/art...rticleID=13104

The all weather tracks are supposed to handle as much rain as falls regardless the time frame short of a flash flood. . they are designed to do that. a 1/2 amount of rain should easily have been shrugged off by SA and for that amnt to give them problems is a signal something has really screwed up the track and we'd like to know what their problem is out therel. :mad:

comments@santaanita.com <comments@santaanita.com>

I heard that the owner was more concern with getting the bridle back :rolleyes:
It's gettin' REAL dangerous traveling the "backroads" in this county.

Well put it this way..... this year we have suffered up to 3 inches of rain within a few hours in our "summer", all around the country, and apart from Southwell (which was washed away) all of the other tracks with artificial surfaces were fine (the drainage just needed a little helping hand, that's all).

As far as i'm aware the rain suffered at SA was not a 'flash flood' or anything like that.

As sumitas said, these tracks are designed to take as much rain as they possibly can. They have been tested when the surface was being developed. The drainage of poly is usually excellent. I don't know what differences there are with cushion track, but i can't image them to be too different.

edit: and to answer your final question, the all weather racing is throughout the year. So i have only seen 2 or 3 all weather cards abandoned because of the surface and that was because of heavy snowfall. The other all weather meetings abandaned in the winter have been because of fog.

The problem is that the base had gotten to compacted and didnt allow the drainage system to do its job , since this bit of rain they went down and turned up the base a little bit to make it less compacted so the next time it rains the water will be able to go thru.
People just need to take it easy and calm down , its a new surface and even tho no one likes it there may be things that need to be adjusted here and there , Im sure by the time the long Santa Anita meet begins the kinks will be ironed out , I wish the horseman would just shut the hell up and stop suggesting things that the track should do like, make it faster , slow it down blah blah blah .

So sayeth the queen:cool:

Your in trouble now Mister and why the hell arent you at work ????????

Trouble with you? Hot damn...dream come true.:D

and who says I aint at work?:o

Thats it :eek: