Funny that we didn't have these concerns over horse health for 100 years. Little fella if you go back and read the pp's and history way before your and my time, the DRF used to have designations for slow or deep tracks.
Go back and look at the archives of histories and stakes races and you will see that many legends won grade one races in times that would be considered glacial today. Were they slower? No, they weren't.
But back then they didn't scrape tracks and pack them down. They allowed them to run a deep cushion and 4-6 inch harrowed surface.
Deep safe cushions and surfaces don't take a rocket scientist to install. Basically you need some dump trucks full of soil.
But "horse health" only became an issue at exactly the same time someone found a way to use that as a marketing tool to get rich.
You can't charge people 8-10 million to install dirt.
Why wasn't this cry for horse health so loud about 5 years ago? Know why? because noone could make money on it.
You musta loved that maiden snail whose now a huge graded winner at Keeneland yesterday huh? What a screaming laughing joke. GPK and I were laughing our asses off on the phone yesterday after the 1st race. Yeah that horse who couldnt hit theboard in three slow Monmouth grass races really looked better than the 2-5 shot. But then again she may have looked better than the stakes winner.
Its garbage, and the "best" horse doesn't win. The horse who detests the tires the least wins. Thats not racing, and its not what horses were born to do. And the funny thing is that it will only contribute to more unsound horses in the long run. Yeah, they won't break down as often and die on teh track. But how about tendons and suspensories? They end up retired or put down for insurance money anyway, or even worse. So now trainers can just keep drilling the **** out of them every 7 days seeing how fast they can possibly run. Thats really not gonna help things.