Oct

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Synthetics not dead yet….

by Barry Roos
Published: October 3, 2009 2 Comments
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As much as I advocate for synthetic surfaces, truly I only desire a safe racetrack for my horses to compete. Most dirt tracks are not safe, and can go from passable to treacherous due to weather or mistakes in maintenance. For a while it seemed there was some momentum building. You had Turfway with early successes in preventing breakdowns. Then Keeneland, the best racetrack in America (my opinion) installed Polytrack. Then you had California actually legislating for synthetics. Arlington and Presque Isle came into the fold as well.

Then the naysayers came out in droves, as well as some serious bumps in the road. Turfway didn’t maintain the great first year safety record. Del Mar had far too many injuries. And it appears many back end injuries seem to be occurring on synthetics. Gamblers didn’t seem to like betting on the surface, which is never a good thing. They drive the sport, if they back away we are all in trouble. Then the icing on the grave seemed to be Rachel Alexandra not running in the Breeders’ Cup due to the “plastic” surface. Still that last argument is hard to take seriously as the filly won on Polytrack, and this is more about an owner still smarting from Curlin’s loss. Had he won Rachel would be running, definitely.

The good news is after several meets gamblers have enough data to go on, and that talk has quieted down a bit. What has evolved is a surface that turf horses seem to like. The nice thing is when a race comes off the turf, the races don’t scratch down to 4 horse fields usually. Naysayers point to the Europeans performing so well in the Breeders’ Cup and say the turf horses have the edge. There may be some truth in that but anything that promotes great international racing can’t be bad for a sport thirsty for any an all fans.

To me however it seemed due to economics, no tracks would pay to install new artificial surfaces, and no tracks that had artificial tracks would pay to replace them. Well I was wrong. This week I read that Meydan, will be going with Tapeta. Now obviously money wasn’t an object, so the fact that chose to go the artificial route is a good boost to those who want to see the tracks continue to be developed.

Bottom Line: Synthetics have a long way to go. To me we are at the beginning of the process, and with further research and engineering we can get to a place where synthetic tracks save lives and can please most fans and horsemen. No, you will never please everyone, but the closer we get, the better off the sport will be in the long term.


Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. ljk on October 8, 2009 12:05 pm

    You can’t possibly believe the Del Mar surface was safer than Saratoga this past summer. It’s not like you can keep chanting “synthetics are safer” until it comes true.

  2. Mike Weatherly on October 8, 2009 12:42 pm

    I don’t think that is a fair comparison ljk. Most trainers use Oklahoma to train on and few train daily on the main track. If you add in breakdowns working on the main track at saratoga, you would be surprised at the numbers. They aren’t reported, as many are chip fractures, not catastrophic breadkdowns.

    I have owned horses at both Arlington and Saratoga and thus far I have had fewer breakdowns on synthetic surfaces, especially in the morning.

    If you re-read the article, you will see the author is saying there is a long way to go, just that with work, we can get to a safe solution.

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