Keeneland and SA Surface Changes
 

Curious as to how everyone plans to approach the SA and Keeneland meet this fall. Do you give them a few days and try to identify early angles or try to predict the angles from the start?

Based on what we know about the respective surfaces, is there reason to believe the surfaces will play similar to existing tracks and if so which ones?

I dont get it, SA has been dirt for a while............do you mean Del Mar this early winter?

SA is replacing the current "store bought dirt" surface (I think the base is staying?) with a naturally-mined dirt surface. Something like that.

Apparently when they were shopping for dirt a couple years ago they had to buy commercially available product. Now they were able to find a locally-occurring, natural dirt mix from part of the LAX refurb project, I think. Either that or a subway project. I think it's called El Segundo dirt.

Somewhere there's an article that describes it better than this.

keeneland dirt was previously speed favoring...I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that return

Wasn't the problem the hedge's on the inside? Will those still be there?

Here I thought the dirt had been working out very well for them...spend money to spend money I guess.

Del Mar will be changing to dirt after the November meet.

I killed all my grass and put in mulch and shrubs.

Great move, laugh and neighbors cutting grass while sipping a beverage

I purchase the Cynthia par book every year.

So when a new track opens or a track changes surfaces like Keeneland and Del Mar will, I write down the finish times of all races on the new surface to use to compare with other tracks.

For example, the Los Al meet ran these new distances.

My findings were----

5f 4 races average time 57.1

5.5f 23 races avg time 1:04.0

6f 19 races avg time 1:10.1

6.5f 2 races avg time 1:16.0

7f 2 races avg time 1:23.0

1 mile 13 races avg time 1:36.4

1 1/16 3 races avg time 1:43.2

1 1/8 1 race time 1:47.0 (grade III)

Of course these times are from both genders and all classes and no variant is factored so I use them as advisory if I use a pace line from there. Plus, since the meet was short, the sample size is small.

At track. where more races are run I do not take times from maiden claiming races or 2 year old races.

When Del Mar switched to Poly I wrote down the times of qualified races and my figures were very close to the times in that Cynthia published in their next book.

Good for you! The obsession with perfect lawns places a huge toll on the environment. Assuming that you didn't go with Cyprus, of course.

The direction of your yard is the direction of your life.

In that case, because of the drought, there are an awful lot of dead people in SoCal. :p

Anyone have thoughts on Woodbine and what the options appear to be?

Excerpt:

According to Koch, WEG also is analyzing the main-track surface and considering long-term alternatives. The three options being considered include maintaining the existing surface, replacing it with a new synthetic surface, or removing the Polytrack and installing a dirt surface.

http://www.drf.com/news/woodbine-con...ace-main-track