Polydeaths in England

[todko]

Originally Posted by ArlJim78

Well okay guys, bid, todko, i tried to warn you about jumping to conclusions. It seems that according to a story in the Racing Post titled "Professionals united in support of Wolverhampton track ", the track is not seen as the culprit for the recent spate of breakdowns.

http://www.racingpost.co.uk/news/home.sd
The site requires you to register. Here are a couple quotes.

"Before racing, HRA inspector of courses Nicky Carlisle conducted an inspection of the surface, initially declaring himself "satisfied but cautious".
He was later confident enough to condemn a "knee-jerk reaction"

"It was not helpful how some reacted, but the most logical conclusion for now is that nothing has changed here, and that spate of incidents is a result of bad luck."

senior jockey "McKeown said: "There is no problem over the track and the surface. The problem is 7lb claimers."

and finally;
"Of the five fatalities, only Money For Fun’s remains unexplained. Two of the others were caused by heart attacks, while another two came as a result of injuries sustained during falls caused by interference. "



So of the five breakdowns that made the headlines, only one came from an unknown cause, the others were explained by factors having nothing to do with the surface.

Please read the article and then read the knee jerk reactionary posts made on this thread. For the life of me I cannot understand why some are going to such lengths to distort this issue..

You post is a little unclear -- you say "of the five breakdowns" -- how does a breakdown result from a heart attack? That follow-up article is a lot of CYA if you noticed.

Breakdowns are distorted here too. Often they are labeled as "pulled up" or "eased". I saw them put the white sheet up at one race last year at TP and the chart said "vanned off". Didn't say dead or alive however. If anything breakdowns are under-reported.

I'm not saying poly is more dangerous than dirt -- all I'm saying is that industry should avoid the "knee-jerk reaction" in rushing to install it everywhere.

I didn't get to see much of it live last night. After the first race at Polyway a transformer blew knocking out the lights in the back stretch. They worked on it for a while and then ultimately canceled racing. Hopefully a piece of poly didn't kick up and short out the transformer .