Why no talk about the breakdowns at Santa Anita this weekend?
 

After all the very good racing at Belmont on Saturday with the off track conditions and no horses going down to injury on conventional dirt and friend of mine comes to me and say he loves Lethal Heat at SA in the 6th right before the JCGC. So I throw a few bucks on the horse and proceed to watch the race. And what to my dismay do I see?? Two nasty f*cking breakdowns in the stretch. A very nice Grazen looks to have broken his leg and pulled up and Blackbriar limping across the wire.
Im mean seriously who in their right mind after seeing this is going to bring their nice horse from over seas and run on that sh*t surface. After watching 100s of races on conv. dirt from different tracks across the country the only breakdown I see is on POLYCRAP.
Cali racing is a joke, polytrack/pro ride or whatever you want to call it is a joke and The Fat Man your a joke for sticking up for that sh*t.
Made me want to puke after watching that. I for one would not bring my horse to the BC this year if I was the connections of any decent horse in the world.

Has to be the surface?

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm no fan of poly mainly b/c I believe horses still get injured on it but the injuries are different....But I'd like to see the meet playout before I said anything about Saturday.....Del Mar was not pretty, that's for sure.

It seems like the early portions of each DMR and SA meet has a lot of breakdowns, then levels off after a couple weeks.

They won't be running on that crap after a few more years is my guess.

To add to this, I believe polytrack was put into place to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Its not doing its job.

I was watching Grazen's race and thinking to myself:

'why is that IDIOT Gomez hellbent on PUSHING Grazen to the lead from the rail, when all he has to do is sit BEHIND Lethal Heat?'

I blame GG's ride for the breakdown in that instance. Putting undue/extra/unnecessary pressure on a game horse is not exactly the best way to go about things.

As for my 'defense' of POLY: I prefer FAIR tracks to all the SPEED FAVORING BIAS BS that is DIRT tracks. Moreover, I'm making a killing playing WO, AP, and the CALI POLY tracks. So much so, that I don't even bother with NYRA tracks (or any of the other dirt/turf tracks I used to play). Bet if I were a Beyer fanatic, I'd be bitching with the rest of you (losers).

P.S. I'd look more closely at TRAINING methods and RIDES by Jocks if I wanted to get to the bottom of why horses break down.

I believe 2 horses broke down at Belmont on Sat.

Not to start this endless battle up again, but if you look statistically, it did it's job at AP. Now, I'm a little more open minded than you because all breakdowns are not surface related, but if you want to make blanket statements, I can make just as many in favor of poly as you can make against...strictly from a breakdown perspective.

He obviously missed the BC at Monmouth as well

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story" - Injun Chuck

These threads are annoying. Every time a horse breaks down, we don't need someone with an obvious agenda to use some horse's tragic demise as evidence that his/her opinion on synthetics v. dirt is somehow legitimized(especially when the statement as to Belmont having no breakdowns on Saturday was factually inaccurate).

Personally, I prefer that all racing be conducted over safe dirt surfaces. But I consistently fail to understand why the "Poly haters" deny/forget the carnage that befell tracks like Del Mar and Arlington before they installed Polytrack. These surface switches didn't just happen in a vacuum, after all.

I agree..

Yeah...why would any jock take a speed horse and go to the lead from the rail. Gomez should have strangled the horse back into traffic then steadied repeatdly.

Then you would be complaining that he took a speed horse back.


The part about Gomez at fault for the horse breaking down is beyond absurd.

I'd have to imagine the actual in-race riding of jockeys contributes to very few, if any fatal breakdowns on the track.

I bring it up because this is the surface, in a months time, that will be host to the breeders cup. I believe that owners and trainers from around the world have their eye on this meet and to see a 3/5 shot in a 200k race ( not some 5k claimer) snap their leg coming down the stretch it brings into question if owner and trainers will take the chance on going on this surface.
Remember this was the "cure all" for breakdowns and now seems to be doing more harm than good.

It did its job at AP?? Whats that keeping the horse safe but paralyzing the jockey?

The 3/5 shot was trained by Mitchell. His horses breaking down is hardly a shocking occurrence on any surface. Not to mention the 3/5 shot did not "snap" his leg as he bowed a tendon. Your argument may have some validity but hyperbole and inaccuracies dont help.

Just for the record, Grazen suffered a tendon injury that was reported as non-life threatening. He didn't "snap" off a leg, as you suggest.

I didnt know jockeys being paralyzed was limited to polytrack. Of course the horse falling on top of Douglas and laying there may have had something to do with it.