Keeneland returning to dirt
 

rumored last weekend, now officially confirmed

http://www.keeneland.com/racing/keen...ain-race-track

Excellent news.............should be an interesting Fall meeting!!

Someone call AAA. The synthetic surface bandwagon has broken down.

:tro:

i hope they manage to install a fair surface, tho. a lot of people took issue with the previous dirt track.


poor pmayjr

Awesome!

:D

Good news for Keeneland and for horseplayers. The Bluegrass can resume its status as a real Derby prep.

aren't you glad they finally cured the black plague of racing? You're full of S if you claim that you quit betting that track once they got a synth surface. You all are.

All I ever argued with the synth surfaces is that they can co-exist with dirt tracks, and that they provide very good betting opportunities. So ok... fine. It's dirt again. It's Keeneland. They'll still get top-quality fields... hopefully without the speed bias

Per Bloodhorse- Keeneland CEO BIll Thomason quote:
"We think it achieved every objective that we wanted with the exception that we hoped it would become the most prevalent racing surface in the United States and that everybody would have it," Thomason said of Polytrack. "For various reasons that has not happened. We regret that it didn't become the prevalent surface... But we also don't think we have to sacrifice the safety parts of it. We are going to be diligent in working toward the safety of the dirt track. We don't think those two are mutually exclusive."

Hopefully they're very proactive with the last part of that quote

It will be safe to go back in the water again now , as long as its not a new super highway with post 1 and 2 wiring all day.

They had changed the banking of the turns and length of stretch when poly was installed, wonder if that stays ???

Thank God! Now I wonder what Turfway will do. Maybe close down?

Yes... keep slowly eradicating the plague. Now that Del Mar and Keeneland went back to dirt, all we need to do is get Golden Gate, Arlington (because we all know the dirt racing at Hawthorne is sooo superior), Presque Isle (hey, we got Parx and Penn National, no need for that stupid place) and Turfway to close and we can bet those 5-horse fields again.

BTW, f$ck Canada. F$ck Woodbine. And most of all F4ck the damn Arabs for building that state of the art track in Dubai where... you know... it's really safe for horses but... I can't ever cash a ticket (because synth is the same as dirt, so why do I keep losing?) so Fck Sheik Mo for not running at Nad al Sheeba anymore

you guys must be so happy that Keeneland and Del Mar eradicated the plague, I'm sure you can end your betting boycotts now. Synth really messed up your ability to cash a ticket... yeah... that's it...

what excuse will you make up when you're still not cashing during Keeneland's fall meet?

I got it. It'll be something like this-

"He was winning all summer at Arlington. Why did he bounce so bad here?"

Really?

Bad batch of meds today?

I did read today, luckily for you, that the Del Mar to dirt thing has hit snags and might not happen after all.

guys... the plague on horse racing has been eradicated... if... you know... breakdowns aren't a plague...

just my inability to cash a ticket on an independent 3rd surface is a plague. So I'm glad they care about me enough, the bettor.

you can end your boycott on all the tracks you know you've bet all along anyway ;)

If that happens will you just wait for Santa Anita's fall meet to bet California again?

Careful guys, you don't want to discourage pmayjr from giving out all those longshot winners at Keeneland he finds due to the surface change before the races are run.

True. His KEE picks in the Selections forum are totally legendary.

pmayjr nerd raged when new coke was shelved in favor of coke classic.

He also thinks Vince Vaughn movies are the best and that Will Ferrell's career has just begun to take off.

they can't and won't co-exist. if they could, the tracks wouldn't be going back to tried and true. this was a ridiculous move, a panacea, a cure all that turned out to be snake oil. keeneland is right, they wanted it to be prevalent-since they were selling the crap. can't argue with that.
the remarks about new coke were spot on-this was 'better', but everyone likes classic better.

Yes, I post them under my other SN- PointGiven1985 ;p

I rarely post picks here, because a lot of times I go to the track on short notice and can't pre-cap. Would you guys give them any credibility anyway lol?

I have respect for anyone who posts their plays publicly. And it would be a chance to back up all your talk about how awesome you do at Keeneland.

exactly. people won't give you a hard time, pmayjr, if you post your picks...and they sure won't if you post winners!

No, not everybody is full of S. I really did quit betting it. Keep in mind it is my home track and would make sense to be the highest handle (per racing day). The proof is right here in my Twinspires account from the last 365 days. The $772 I bet was 2.52% of my total handle of $30,649 on TS for the year.
http://1drv.ms/1k0enkx

Dont you mean too say.. CDI the owner of Poly has abandon the hopes and dreams of making poly the preferred surface in racing and now realizes that a safer state of the art surface on dirt is more advantageous to the company's P/L.

Dirt is just a superior surface, perhaps not for snapping legs but certainly for making money

Have to think that since their premiere race has turned into a joke since the installation of the synthetic surface and should lose its current Graded status might have factored into this decision as well.

Experiment went wrong.. They didnt earn plain and simple. Nothing to do with attendance or handle has to do with the simple fact that nobody in 2014 is considering poly as an alternative to dirt.

They took a shot and it didnt not work period. All the other nonsense is just noise.

Now assuming they redo the track properly with all the latest and greatest let us see if it is as safe on horses being killed as poly as the pundits will now have an apples to apples comparsion.. IF it isnt racing has a decision to make. In a far fetched way its the only out they truly have save PMay

Gotta love how you at least tried to show a little love to every track. :D

I've also heard rumors DelMar and Keeneland will be courting a Breeder's Cup in the near future.

NO to Keeneland and a HUGE YES to DelMar unless they move the BC date to Aug-Sept.

Welcome to dirt nonetheless....

That said I will be betting Keeneland come Friday.

Just venting!

The degeneracy is strong with this one. :D

ha! I don't think I ever said I was the greatest at Keeneland or anywhere. I have my good days and my shitty ones. I did post Dubai in-depth analysis last weekend, and I think I cashed 2 tickets? So I don't claim to be anything close to awesome, but I do have proven angles that work time and time again in regard to synth surfaces (or horses shipping to dirt from a synth track).

Graham Motion tweet-
It's complicated but the facts are polytrack has been safer & that's my disappointment. Lets hope the new dirt @keeneland is much improved.

"It's complicated, but the facts are???"

Oh boy.

Facts are, dirt can be much safer than it is.

what's that saying....you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

the people who like synthetics are outnumbered by those who don't, and the powers that be have decided to get the heck away from it. they wouldn't spend money on new surfaces unless they really felt strongly about this. it's the right move.

In 2013, He won 30% of his starts over synthetic tracks in North America, and he won a $10 million race on a synthetic track in Dubai.

He's got a barn mostly full of turf bred horse -- and he trains them on synthetic at Fair Hill ... it would be a surprise if he disliked synthetic tracks.

Pretty much. Motion is a great trainer, but expecting him to have an unbiased opinion on synthetic tracks is foolish.

The bottom line is the data on synthetic vs. dirt is inconclusive at best. Certain synth tracks (Presque Isle, Woodbine) have been markedly safer than the average dirt track, at least in terms of fewer catastrophic breakdowns. There are others (Del Mar, Hollywood) that have been as bad as the worst dirt tracks most years. Then there's the issue of soft tissue injuries, which many trainers have cited as more frequent on synthetic and which don't show up in the breakdown statistics.

Another inconvenient truth for the synthetic crowd is that the circuit which concerted the most effort in making its dirt safer -- NYRA -- got drastically fewer breakdowns in 2013. AQU went from 3.41 fatalities per 1,000 dirt starts to 1.85. BEL went from 1.86 to 0.88. SAR had a slight uptick from 1.23 to 1.29, but that has the smallest sample size of the three tracks.

The well-publicized breakdowns of Barbaro and Eight Belles were a flashpoint for this industry. Instead of getting out in front of the issue and using technology to make our dirt tracks safer, the powers that be cowed to the demagogues and turned the sport upside down with a drastic shift to unproven synthetic surfaces as a cure-all. It's been an unmitigated failure for the sport and marginally, if at all, safer for the horses.

Wasn't this also due to more aggressive vet monitoring and scratching a higher number of horses, and lower purses for claimers where more sore horses had been entered too ?

Exactly!

You can make dirt safer, or riskier. Same as any surface.

People who believe that synth is inherently safer than dirt are looking at this issue too simplistically.

NY Times: A Track’s Shift to Dirt Adds to Horses’ Risks

Written by...you guessed it! Joe Drape.

Some ways I'd like to slice and dice the fatality data if I could:

1) age of dirt tracks the year before conversion to poly.

2) avg lifetime BSFs (and trends) for all fatalities...or some other well-used indicator of 'class'

3) trends on tracks where the material is nearing its service life and hasn't been replaced (unlike, say Hollywood Park which had its surface amended several times).