Wood on Saturday

[pick4]

Originally Posted by MaTH716

That's what my big problem is. Really no long term research has been done to prove that synthetic IS safer than dirt. But the Polly police is always trying to jam it down everyone's throat. All I know is that I saw a horse by himself with a 4 length lead and about 100 yards to go, breakdown horrificly (and it wasn't one of those 8000 claimers that ran last night either). If this would have been Belmont or Churchill, the Polypolice would in a posting frenzy. I don't want to turn this into another poly/dirt thread. So I have said my peace.

I agree with you 100 percent. There are so many variables which have contributed to the weakening of the breed. A well maintained dirt course should be good enough.

I don't know if you follow NY racing but everytime we get heavy rain, NYRA has to cancel racing if they are running on Aqueduct's main track.

Aqueduct was rebuilt in the late 1950's and I'm going to assume that the base of the racetrack was a part of the work that was done on the track.
When was the last time, the main track's base was replaced? They installed the inner dirt course in 1975. Was any work done on the main track when they ripped out the main turf course?

I think I'm stating the obvious here but a more pragmatic approach to synthetic surfaces would have been to install a few in different areas. One at Turfway Park which has cold winters. Maybe install another at one of the So Cal tracks that run in the spring and summer. The people at Delmar really pushed hard to have this surface installed so that would of been a good track to test the surface. These are all "they should of" arguments.