My Prediction for Santa Anita
 

I don't think there is any doubt that they are going to switch to regualr dirt. That is pretty obvious. The question is what they're going to do later on. At the end of the meet or at the end of the year, will they put in another synthetic surface or will they try to stick with conventional dirt? They're going to get a waiver that will allow them to use regular dirt, but the waiver will expire at the end of this year. They wouldn't have asked for this waiver if they didn't intend on putting in conventional dirt.
Stronach did not want to put a synthetic track in to begin with. I think that at one point he considered playing hardball and was going to fight the CHRB. Everyone pretty much wanted him to put in a synthetic surface and he finally gave in.
It will be very interesting to see what happens this time around. I would not be surprised if he says, "Look, we tried it. We spent $11 million and it didn't work. I'm not going to do it again. If you want to try to force me to put in another synthetic track then I'll see you in court."
I can't say for sure that this is what's going to happen. But I am pretty sure that they are going to put in a dirt track at least for now. I can't say what will happen after that.
I think they will be able to put a new dirt tack in relatively fast, so I don't think that they will need to move to Hollywood Park. It was pretty clear from Charles' statement yesterday that they are not going to move to Hollywood.

What is your prediction for the surface that the breeders cup will be run over?

i agree that he will try to stick with dirt, if that is what they are going to do right away--why install another surface, after trying AWT, only to pull that up and go BACK to another AWT? three installations in a year? no way...

and as for the CHRB fighting that...good luck, as frank need only mention bay meadows. then there's the fact that both bay meadows and hollywood are expected to only be short term, with development expected in the near future of both properties.

interesting side bar to the main story...will the BC come out in favor of remaining on a conventional surface? did the bc committee know when they chose santa anita that it would have an AWT or were the dates announced previous to the chrb mandate?

I think they will move to dirt and end up having a great meet. Pressure will come from everywhere on the CHRB to let them keep it especially with a Breeders Cup this year.

The open questions involve all the legalities and who is going to pay for all of it.

Is Stronach an IDIOT? The whole point of cushion track was to continue to get east coast stables to keep horse out west and it was starting to work.

Santa Anita F*** ed up the installation and the manufacture has said that it will do what ever it takes to make it right.

Get Cushion track to get it right and move on.

Santa Anita and Steve Woods were never able to do dirt right, the back side was fast and from the 1/4 pole to the wire was slow. If you didn't have the lead at the 1/4 pole you had NO CHANCE.

I know you meant this but Santa Anita didn't mess anything up, they paid CushionTrack to install it, and they messed it up. Who knows what is going to happen

Hey, why not run turf races all day? I would love to see an 8 race 6.5 furlong race with 12 horses in each. Sounds delicious!

I think Santa Anita tried to make the horseman happy after seeing what happened at Del Mar and I admire them for that.

I just don't think they should go to court and fight for a dirt track. I'm starting to like the syntheic tracks.

Say what you want, but it has put more horses in races. Golden Gate has a whole new life with its track.

I love Santa Anita and don't want to see this turn into a pissing contest that no one wins.

Ya Golden Gate's surface has just been super :rolleyes:

I guess no one heard Rick Hammerle update the ATR audience tonight at 6:30.

A final decision will be reached tomorrow once SA management knows if there is enough topsoil and associated materials available to them for immediate delivery for the laying down of a dirt surface. If there is, they will install it while running turf cards.

If there is not enough material available to them, they will soldier on with the CushionTrack as is.

Owners and trainers are still running thier horses on it no matter what this board has to say. Full fields too.:cool:

I am not anti-synthetic but 12 horses have broken down or been vanned off in 17 days at GG so far. That is an insane statistic. If that happened at SA/Hollywood/Del Mar it would be front page news. Del Mar had 8 breakdowns in their entire meet in 06 and it was front page news and probably one of the reasons Cali is all synthetic.

Sa ????????
 

Any decision yet?

tomorrow

I guess the numbers being thrown about (here, Pace Advantage, ATR) reference GG are from Dan Ilman's DRF form blog? What I count from what Dan actually posted is:

2 broke down, 9 vanned off, 5 walked off, 1 stopped work as saddle slipped.

More from Dan's Blog:

What good is having 9 horses in the gate if 1 a race doesnt finish? Ive never seen as many eased walked off running lines in my life. They seemingly have an "eased but walked off" a day. If horses do not handle the tracks, horses are breaking down over the tracks, and horses are coming back sore, what more do the propoly people need? What was the point to installing these tracks if their breakdown rate is the same as dirt, they are harder to take care of, and they arent all weather? They need to be torn out and good solid dirt tracks need to be installed.

While these aren't included in the counts, I was looking at the charts for the Golden Gate races and saw a surprisingly high number of horses that had the comment "Stopped". They didn't break down and weren't eased or vanned off so they won't be included in the numbers. But that did jump out at me as unusual. I wonder how many of those horses stopped because they weren't comfortable or because they were injured in some kind of way but not serious enough to have to be eased or to have the van come out.

Interesting quote from pletcher today:

“A dirt surface isn’t going to discourage us any,” Pletcher said by telephone early Thursday morning from Palm Beach Downs in Florida. “In fact, we might run more horses. We like dirt.”

so much for the contention that poly is what drew more east coasters. it may have been just a track change period that drew them. what they changed to may have only been secondary.

So what does it say if the synthetic tracks are drawing bigger fields?

A. The horsemen as a whole must like it.

B. It brings out the questionable horses
because they have a chance on the stuff.

C. None of the above... and here is my reasoning...

I choose A.

The most overused quote from the pro carpeting crowd: "all the horses have a chance and there's no bias."

When speed never wins and a surface repeatedly favors ass-draggers, I say its biased.

Speed never wins??? Did you not see opening day at SA?

Brad Free has an interesting piece he wrote today in DRF:

Handicapping | Posted 1/10/2008, 6:55 pm

Cushion Track still the right way to go
By BRAD FREE

http://www.drf.com/drfNewsArticle.do?NID=91504 (Subscribers to DRF Plus)

If you look at Arlington, Keeneland, Turfway, Golden Gate, etc, and look at the handicapping websites where they list the percentage of races won by front end, stalkers, closers, etc. during each meet, you will see that speed indeed wires quite a bit on artificial surfaces.

Only 2 vanned off today at Santa Anita.

The big difference is being able to put down that surface and being forced to by the CHRB. I'm pretty sure for $11 million you could put down a crazy safe dirt surface like Saratoga had this year. Actually you could have done that with 10 million to spare.

Or maybe they haven't been trained to a sufficient degree of fitness to compete at the distance?

Wow.

Windshields installed on jockeys at SA :D ... see Bloodhorse

Very deep, very insightful.

Didn't read the artical and I bet it's about the asphalt base coming apart. The track looks real bad and I bet Santa Anita doesn't wait to make a change.

The base is kicking up. They say its new sand added, but anybody with a brain knows better. 10 claimers are going 107 for 3/4s.

The kickback on all the synthetics has always been an issue. At TWP there are a lot of horses that refuse to run through the kickback and totally shut it down. Same with Keeneland and horses swinging out 10 wide, they wont run through the garbage

Some wont through dirt either.
All kinds of diff. kickback at diff. dirt tracks and depending on the amount of moisture in the dirt you can get giant clods in the face.

If the stuff does indeed prove to draw larger fields, and allow running in all weather (in the long run), get used to it.
Why in the world would anyone not want larger fields, and racing during times that they were previously unable to run horses?

Pee Garden, do me a favor, dont try to act like you know something when you really dont. You dont know anything about track composition, kickback, or anything else that relates to horseracing. Keep your comments isolated to the football threads where I dont know anything about the topic. In this case, like most horseracing topics you chime in on, you are clueless.

You wanna try me.
How many tracks have you walked on?
How many tracks have you dug into?
Give me the % sand by volume and the type of sand used in
the track you frequent (not the base). What is the average grain size
smart guy?

We will stick with the sand for now. Then we can move on to the type(s) of dirt
Maybe they refer to it as silt and clay in your area, we will get to that later.

Ive walked on a lot more than you Pee Garden

Im not going to google some useless information to battle with you. If you cannot see the kickback is an issue at these tracks then you dont watch many races. When visors are implemented, horses are cocking heads to get out of kickback, nice horses arent finishing runs unless they are out in the 8 path, thats enough for me.

Maybe Santa Anita should hire you as the track Super. Call Magna and tell them you have all the answers, dont tell me because I dont care. I didnt know we had an authority on tracks here, why are you here wasting time when they should be flying you out to fix their issue?

'Bout time you admitted it. ;)

I called your bluff and you
chicken out. Nice BS. You dont know squat.

Why is sand even used, why not just pure dirt. Lets start with something easy for you?
And that base that was kicking up that was not sand, what was it then?