Arlington safety...putting it in perspective

[The Bid]

BUMP

[ArlJim78]

from the drf article, a quote from Michael Baze who was riding Drill Down.

"He was real relaxed," Baze said. "He just took a bad step at the quarter pole."

and Drill Down's trainer;

"You're always hearing things about the racetrack, but I can't say the track is bad," Machowsky said. "It's just one of those things, and it's a tough one to choke down."

[The Bid]

I know where they broke down, both over life saving surfaces.

Jim, heres a few others since you are into the quotes

Trainer Jack Carava had several main-track workouts scheduled for Monday morning, but made a last-minute decision to move his works to the dirt training track.

"It just didn't feel right," he said about the Cushion Track. "I know what they had to do [Sunday] to this track to get it to dry out."


"It's a work in progress, and I think they haven't got the point where they have it right yet," he said.

Vienna will work horses on the training track instead.

Cushion Track is billed as an all-weather surface, but when Magna track-surface consultant Ted Malloy was asked how the surface handled the approximate half-inch of weekend rain, he answered, "Not very well." Malloy said it will improve with revised maintenance procedures.

To me, and anyone else with a brain, it seems like they dont know what they are doing. The track obviously DIDNT handle the rain, but I guess we can spin it however wed like. Fact is 2 very nice horses had catastrophic breakdowns over an all weather synthetic surface devised to save lives and handle rain.

[VOL JACK]

Your making me look forward to Keeneland. The prez of Kee, Nich Nicholson, proclaimed the racetrack was "the star of the meet". If he says so it must be true because track management is never wrong.

[sumitas]

it is extremely disappointing to read there are problems handling the rain when that is supposed to be a huge plus for poly. very disappointing the way the SA poly is performing, no question.

[JJP]

Remember back 2 years ago, when Turfway rolled out its new Polytrack? The reasoning made sense; the track runs during brutal winters and the feeling was, there would be less cancellations. Nobody said a word about it being safer before that TP meet started. By the end of the winter meet, we heard all kinds of talk about fewer breakdowns; IMO, TP is the ONLY track that should've installed synthetic.

So what do the "deep thinkers" that control California racing do? They hear this, and mandate all non-fair tracks in California put this junk in. These people likely have never experienced a Midwestern winter, and had no idea how much sand and chemicals were added to the old TP track in the winter, when the track did have a problem w/cancellations and more breakdowns. Seeing what happened at TP and applying it to SoCal was extremely flawed logic. As for Keeneland, being a part owner in Polytrack, it was no surprise they put it in; they wanted to shed the image of being a rail biased racetrack. They did that.....only now their once proud track has become a laughingstock. All they needed to do was reconfigure the track, which they did. After only 12 years of playing Keeneland, I can give up their 6 weeks a year and not even miss it.

Those of us who followed racing in the late 80s remember what was said about the Equitrack at Remington, which also had been used in the UK.....the wave of the future. Within a few years, it was ripped out; the so-called all-weather surface clearly was unable to handle the heat of the Oklahoma summers.

[sumitas]

there were some problems with Woodbine as well but apparently that has been resolved. so with the exception of SA, the all weather is on balance a success this time around, at this point in time.