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#34
02-22-2014, 09:26 AM
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http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com...uyaRZ0.twitter
"Del Mar is going back to dirt and you ought to be at least a little bit upset. It's hard to say you really care about the safety of these animals if you're not." -Bill Finley (aka GOD) Personally I have mixed feelings about synthetic surfaces drawn from the actual experience of training and racing over several of them. They are certainly useful when you get a ton of rain. They are certainly crappy when you dont. They are at times uneven and biased like every other surface. They cause a lot of foot issues along with soft tissue injuries. The stats that lead Finley to bemoan that the majority of people with an opinion (both bettors and horsemen) don't prefer them are not entirely kosher. Being that Woodbine, Del Mar, Hollywood Park, Golden Gate, Arlington Park and Keeneland along with Presque Isle and Turfway are the only tracks that make up the synthetic stats (I know SA briefly, did i forget anyone?), it is hardly an accurate representation of American dirt racing. Golden Gate has a miniscule starters per race number. Only Turfway races in the Winter. Hollywood, Del Mar, Woodbine and to a lesser extend Arlington have top grade horse populations especially compared to all dirt Penn national, Turf Paradise, any Texas track, any Ohio track, Suffolk, any WV track, any NM track, Timonium, etc. Just using raw data without regard to the class of horses, weather conditions , etc makes the number quite flawed. But hey Bill says you are a bad person for being happy that a top meet would bow down the the wishes of its horsemen and bettors... Of course he lets the tracks, Del Mar and Keeneland (who just said they would remain on poly), off the hook because he might have to grovel to them for advertising money... ps- I rarely bet synthetic races either 
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