Arlington Park gets it

[miraja2]

Originally Posted by stonegossard

Wow....there is a horse player on this planet who loves it. This is a first.


Hopefully in time when handles continue to decrease/purses go down, the tracks realize that they need to re-install dirt tracks. A majority of the horseplayers I know wont go near a lot of these poly tracks. Keeneland's spring meet was all you need to look at.

I've been asking this for some time now but I'll ask it again one more time:
We know that not all of these synthetic surfaces are the same, so why do many people feel the need to be 100% pro-synthetic, or 100% anti-synthetic, across the board?

Del Mar's surface was an absolute joke. Santa Anita's was worse. Keeneland was pretty bad too.
But that doesn't change the fact that it has pretty much been a good thing at Arlington. The surface plays pretty fairly, field size was up last year, etc. Overall I am not a big fan of synthetic surfaces, but to lump all of these surfaces together never made much sense to me. Did we judge ALL dirt surfaces based on the way the old Keeneland track played? Of course not.
Do I think most tracks would be better served investing money installing the best and safest dirt tracks? Yes. But that doesn't prevent me from seeing that the change at Arlington seems to have worked out pretty well.