In with the New, Out with the Polycrap

Santa Anita will open its brand new dirt track for training this Monday. In the political and economic realities of horse racing in California, it marks a sudden and radical turnabout in the direction of the sport. At perhaps the highest profile track in American racing to go synthetic, the surface has been quickly wiped away, as if to say it was never there in the first place. Bringing back dirt serves as a clear admission that the installation of the synthetic surface, only a few years earlier, was a mistake. It was simply a bad idea. Like many bad ideas it was rushed into and shoved down the throats of everyone connected. Live and learn. Or did we? Remington Park went to something called Equitrack in 1988. By 1991, the Oklahoma track went back to dirt. Back then, they were the only one to experiment. In 2010 no fewer than nine major North American tracks have a synthetic surface acting as their main track. American racing and breeding has been geared for dirt racing since its inception. Our horses are dirt horses. Trying to change that may have been doable, but it was not practical. As horse racing struggles to keep its fan base and gambling dollars, now was not the time to go through a reinvention project that would take dozens of years to successfully complete. If synthetic surfaces fulfilled the promise of greater safety and more consistent surfaces, then maybe we could have lived with the long adaptation process of our horses. Unfortunately, the benefits are just not there. Call it what you want, all-weather track or synthetic surface. Whatever the type, Polytrack, Cushion track, Pro-Ride, or Tapeta, these surfaces have not been good for American racing. They were supposed to make our horses and riders safer. They do not. The injuries might be different, but they remain. Consistency through weather, or from one track to another, is no better than it was on dirt. If anything it is worse. The only thing that shifting to all-weather surfaces at many of our major tracks really accomplished was splintering a sport. A sport that did not need to splintered. Horsemen don’t like it. Gamblers don’t like it. The state of California was the worst perpetrator in jumping on a shaky bandwagon of artificialness, but they were far from alone. At least Santa Anita realized and acted upon their mistake quickly. To my own beloved Arlington Park I only have this to say … you are a beacon of beauty and grandeur in the Midwest. You are the trusted keeper of a rich and storied past. You have one of the greatest cities in the world ready to embrace you. Your coffers will soon be reinvigorated by the cold hard cash of slot machines. Your turf course already sparkles in resplendent green … Scrap the crap and return to dirt, and do it now.