It's not just the surfaces that cause breakdowns. It's a combination of incompetent trainers, unethical trainers, and poor racing surfaces.
Hollywood Park is the safest track we have in Southern California. Even at Hollywwod Park, some of our horses will come out of breezing workouts with puffy ankles. I've heard that this will not happen on polytracks. If you work a sound horse nice and slow on a polytrack, they will usually come out of the work great. The surface is much kinder on them.
At Santa Anita, the track is so bad that you have to hold your breath after every workout and hope your horse comes back in one piece. That's why they're going to close the track for the next two weeks and try to figure out what's wrong with it.
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