Santa Anita to Keep Present Surface
 

From what I am hearing as of right now, Santa Anita is going to keep the surface that they have. They are going to bring Ian Pierce back and do a little more work on it, but they aren't going to rip the whole track out or anything like that.

Should be an interesting BC. I'm expecting a lot better racing on the poly than they had on that concrete the last BC.

Sounds real nice. Maybe, now, with the money they'll save, they might be able to afford FULL HEADON replays. Splurge, boys.

You're the best.

You talking about last time at Santa Anita?? Because I think last year was more like soup than concrete.


- Kinda figured they'd stick to what they have... I mean they're not exactly rolling in the dough right now.

The last BC at SA. Last year sucked too.

yeah but you can blame mother nature for that.

I know how much you love poly.. but when Go Between beats curlin and Big Brown in the BC I will throw up a little.

I liked the 2003 BC just fine, thank you.

Mother nature ? They had as much rain at Keeneland and their track was perfect, unaffected by the rain.

Are you a moron?

Mother nature is SOLELY to blame for last year's BC, hell, they might have CANCELLED racing if it were in California and that amount of rain....

Keeneland was just fine, thank you. If tracks want to keep that out dated dirt, then they suffer the consequences of the weather.

KEENELAND DIDN'T GET THE SAME AMOUNT OF RAIN THAT MONMOUTH GOT!!!

What do I need to do to drill this into your melon? They got like 7 inches of rain in a 24 hour period or something, ANY track would have issues with that...

So pretty much no Curlin in the classic? Atta boy horse racing :cool:

Ah yes, who could forget that Breeders' Cup on polytrack at Keeneland? That was a fun time.

I was there in Jersey and pard they didnt get no 7 inches of rain in 24 hrs. , it was more just a steady moderate rain , from about mid day Thursday till Sat afternoon , if it had been a rain as hard as you proclaim the track would have been better because it would have rolled off but the way it just steadily lightly rained for 3 days it just got deeper and deeper and that track was crapola.

Santa Anita's track does not play like polytrack , well because it isnt Polytrack I guess that would be the reason . And as far as it draining it has drained just fine ever since the Aussie man fixed Cushion tracks inept failure .

No Poly at Santa Anita. Cushion track is different. quite different. Horses who run on Cushion can usually show the same form on dirt.

The 2003 BC at SA was in 95 degree heat and fires all around LA area

The 2007 BC @ Monmouth was 55 degrees and rain all around NJ

BC @ Belmont has never been higher than the low 50's, with a northern breeze it always felt colder.

Perhaps a change of time in the year for the BC?..........or just pick your poison for a venue.

No one is holding a gun to their head NOT to run. The funny thing is if BB wins the Belmont, Curlin has almost no chance to be horse of the year anyway.

Tampa Bay Downs, here we come. :p

curlin can run on broken glass and win........

As a good as Curlin ran in the JCGC, BC Classic and DWC, one could argue that he beat a horse who peaked at Saratoga (Lawyer Ron) and was regrsssing when he ran in the JCGC. Curlin clearly relished the slop at Monmouth but the runner up's only win at 1 1/8 or more was a race on Polytrack at Turfway. The Dubai Classic was weak and he beat a bunch of slow horses in that race.


Is Curlin a very good horse? Yes!! He has proved on the track that he is a good horse. He's the best older horse dirt distance runner still in training. Is he unbeatable? No.

nice try, but i'm not buying any of it. if he's beatable then let me know who it is that can do it.

Maybe Jess Jackson could care less about another eclipse for HOY. Curlin already has a Breeders Cup Classic and a Dubai World Cup win. He may want to prove to people that Curlin is one of the greatest of all time. A victory in The Arc would just about cinch it.

Heatseeker.

That surface is a complete joke.

nfw does heatseeker touch Curlin even at SA.

Maybe so but he needs to win the Arc because winning the BC and Dubai WC hardly qualifies one as one of the all time greats. When I see him training on french soil i will believe he is going to run there. I suppose i would be looking for alternatives for the BC considering Assmussens strangely terrible record on synthetics.

Curlin is a very good horse. He's the best horse in training. That being said he's not unbeatable. Upsets do happen. I just posted a contrarian outlook on his last three major victories. The history books of horse racing and other sports are filled with "unbeatable" competitors who were defeated. I'm not going off the deep end and saying he will lose his next race. It's just that the one thing I've noticed is when the conventional wisdom says something is a sure thing, a lot of times the opposite occurs.

Turf Paradise??

It rained at Santa Anita the last couple of days and the track did not drain well. I wonder if this will make them reconsider. I don't know how they can keep the current surface if it's not draining properly. What if it rains in October right before the BC? I know they are going to do some more tests in the next week or two. If the track doesn't drain properly when they do these tests, I would think they would have to reconsider. I would think that alot will depend on what advice Ian Pierce gives them. He is supposed to supervise the tests.

test at santa anita
 

art. just a couple of hours ago.
to test the whole track and just see where there is a problem.




http://sports.yahoo.com/rah/news?slu...v=ap&type=lgns

Only 5 horses worked on Friday at SA

DRF article

http://www.drf.com/news/article/94840.html

Drainage problems reappear at Santa Anita
By STEVE ANDERSEN
ARCADIA, Calif. - Santa Anita's synthetic main track failed to completely drain after a surprise storm dropped nearly two inches of rain on Thursday evening and early Friday. The rain left small pools of water in some places on the track and prompted some trainers to curtail training Friday morning.

The storm came less than a week before Santa Anita is scheduled to conduct an extensive test to simulate the effects of a three- to four-inch rainstorm on the surface, track president Ron Charles said. The test will be conducted after training concludes next Wednesday, and training will be canceled on Thursday and possibly Friday, Charles said.

"We're looking to see that water gets down to the asphalt and it drains through the asphalt," Charles said. "Getting two inches was a good test. With some additional work, we can have the racetrack in perfect shape for the Oak Tree meeting."

Santa Anita will host the Breeders' Cup on Oct. 24-25 during the Oak Tree meeting and again in the fall of 2009.

Santa Anita's synthetic track is a mix of Cushion Track material installed in August 2007 and Pro-Ride material that was added in early February after the track lost 11 days of racing when the surface failed to drain. Following the renovation to add polymers and fibers from Pro-Ride, Santa Anita had no further cancellations. The track had encountered only minimal rain until Thursday.

"We're still in the process of trying to get the kinks out of it," track superintendent Richard Tedesco said. "It's not 100 percent and we know that."

Tedesco estimated the track received 1 3/4 inches of rain in an 18-hour period ending at 9 a.m. on Friday, with more rain expected throughout the day. Hollywood Park, where racing was being conducted approximately 35 miles to the southwest, received virtually no rain.

There were small pools of standing water on the outside of the track near the quarter pole in hoof prints on Friday morning.

Horses exercised on the main track on Friday morning, though there were only five recorded workouts. Some trainers chose not to work horses.

Jack Carava sent out two horses for workouts. "I breezed a few on it and they went okay," Carava said. "It seems to be holding water on the outside. This feels like January. Other than holding a little water, it seems safe."

Trainer Ted West said "none of my exercise riders have complained about it."

Mike Machowsky canceled one workout and limited the 2-year-olds in his barn to tack-walking.

Other trainers were not as satisfied.

"It's got soft spots and it's really inconsistent," Jeff Mullins said.

Charles said Ian Pearse, the founder of Pro-Ride, will be present at Santa Anita for the water test next week. He said water will be applied "over a short period of time, which is kind of what we just got."



I still say best place for BC is Woodbine.

I can't tell you how happy I was to read this article. SA officials had acted like this new stuff had solved their problems when in reality, the weather cooperated and they never got a real test. So with their first real one, here's what they got.

I think this is absolutely true and very similar to Big Brown this year. Curlin and BB are both helped by the fact that there is no competition out there for them. Both are very good horses but both are probably a little overrated. Curlin might just be unbeatable this year because there is nothing out there but he's not so good that he's an unbeatable horse, if that makes any sense. Remember, this is a horse that ran third in the Derby, won the Preakness by a nose, lost the Belmont, and was third in the Haskell. So obviously, when he faces other good horses, he can be beaten. He's good but he's no superhorse.

Its solved, ask Sumitas

Hollywood held up very well to a unusually wet winter, I have no clue why santa anita had so many problems if it was the same surface.

It's not the same surface. The same company installed both surfaces but at Santa Anita they used a different type of sand and a different type of wax.

that was a painful miscalculation then, I know its warmer at santa anita but someone ****ed up real bad in figuring which wax to use.

I like the Hollywood surface, if all three had that surface I would not have a problem with socal synthetics.

It was a huge miscalculation. Cushion Track went out of business because of it.