god dang that looked bad
 

hope these guys are ok

Race 1 at Aqueduct
 

Nasty, nasty spill. I hope the riders are OK. Mountain General rolled over at the top of the stretch and laid belly up on the track. Another horse went over him, somersaulted and got back up and cantered away. Durkin was shaken in his call. Scary sight. :(

Race 1 at Aqu? I just posted about it too. Santos and Coa were the riders down. Didn't look good for Mountain General. :(

santos had the full brunt of it..bad deal..

Durkin said Coa got up and just looking at the replay it seemed like Santos was at least sitting up.

That was ugly.

That as awful.... RIP Mountain General...

these guys are nuts no way id ride,,,hats off to them...5 rattles to all the jocks...santos .goes to the hospital..coa..seems ok..per tvg

Durkin just said Santos didn't seem to have suffered anything serious.

thats great...i heard that..i was counting my cash on mg..yesh rip

glad to see all humans were ok. i am sad for the horses and all the connections. hopefully, the day will get better. bad 7/5 fav in the 2nd.

They said Fit Faze appears o.k. I don't know how.He took a pretty hard header.My head hurts just looking at that header.

Aqueduct better get on the phone to the polytrack people. This is going to be a long winter for them. The trainers and owners can't be happy with that track.

Not sure of what happened but if it was a heart attack then it had nothing to do with the surface.

If they were not having so many problems with their track I would give them the benefit of the doubt, but do you know how rare a heart attack is? Watch the race, he took a bad step. Might not have been the track, there are accidents that just happen, but it looked like a bad step and this often happens due to an inconsistency in the track.

When you look at Aqueducts numbers at the end of the meet, and the fact that they can't even get their main track operational, I have to believe polytrack would be much safer.

Don't think it was a heart attack.I'll just leave it at that.

You have an agenda so your misguided comments carry no weight. The problems, which are circumspect at best, are with the main track. These races are taking place over the inner which is as safe as any dirt track in the country.

Mountain General is an 8YO cheap claiming sprinter who was being asked to go 1 1/8 miles for the first time in 55 career starts. While his accident is unfortunate, it happens at tracks around the country, and any blame does not lie on the surface more than a surface can be blamed for any accident. These things happen in racing, on dirt, on turf, and yes on polytack, so pretending somehow the surface is to blame is folly.

This " NYRA should install polytack " kind of talk is insane. The franchise is in limbo, the real possibility exists that someone else will be running it in just over a year, the track has financial difficulties, the State refuses to authorize slots even though every other track awarded them has been given the go-ahead, but somehow people are insisting NYRA spend upwards of $8 million to install a racing surface? Now, when the franchise has been settled, and slots are in, even though I am at least dubious about Polytrack, certainly they should at least look into installing it. And they will. But, for now it makes absolutely zero sense, other than an insipid need to continually berate NYRA for anything that goes wrong, even though it happens everywhere, and this makes no sense. A horse broke down on the Churchill surface on BC Day. I assume you made the same comments about their surface....you know, the one Barbaro won the Derby over.

I have no agenda. I don't own polytrack. I don't think Belmont or Saratoga should get rid of the dirt tracks, but Aqueduct is ridiculous. The main track is out of business for days because they don't know how to take care of it, so why should I believe the inner track is safe? Aqueduct is winter racing. All winter racing should be on polytrack for the safety of horses. Dirt tracks in cold weather are very dangerous and very hard on horses.

I put horses health first, you seem to put gamblers (and their dislike of poly because their thorograph sheets are useless) first. Do you care about horses or are they just numbers to you that you bet on and then watch them be taken away in the truck when they are done?

The same maintenance crew works Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga, so your opinion is completely contradictory.

The " If you don't like Polytrack you don't care about the safety of horses " argument is only used by people who have an indefensible position and know it. Your following idiocy only further stresses your lack of a defensible argument. I said I was " dubious " of Polytrack, and unlike zealots like yourself, and yes you have clearly established an anti-NYRA agenda on this site, I prefer to take a wait and see approach about the surface. As another poster stated here, Woodbine is having huge problems with their surface, so regardless of what you would like people to believe these Polytrack surfaces have NOT proven to be better for racing all around.

If you care so much about the safety of horses, as I'm sure your interests in this game are not at all financially motivated, then why haven't you organized a PETA demonstration in front of racetracks around the country? Surely you aren't going to insist that this sport is only concerned with the safety of animals. If that was the case horse racing would be shut down immediately.

TO me Mountain General is an example of a horse who was raced too long. I wouldn't go so far as to call him a cripple but this was a serious stakes horse once upon a time. Bluesthestandard redux, but not as bad b/c jockeys would actually get on this one in the morning. Some of these geldings deserve homes instead of being raced into the ground....And I don't buy the track nonsense. I've seen very little problems with the inner over the past decade. And I've always though the main was good too. In fact all the NY tracks are safe.

The maintenance crew this year didn't take care of the other tracks while they were away. They said they couldn't afford it. Belmont was taken care of by a skeleton crew while they were at Saratoga. Everyone knows this, atleast everyone that claims to know the game.

Woodbine is not having huge problems. Do you just make up things?

http://news.bloodhorse.com/viewstory.asp?id=35063

Why is Pletcher and other like Dutrow heading off to run on it?

The main is out not because they don't know how to take care of it -- it's because they know; and what they know is the way to take care of it after the water damage is with time. There has been no commentary about the inner. It is a completey different surface. I am a supporter of the alternative track surfaces but to just use that as an end all or cure all answer is not the answer in my opinion.

More importantly, any news on Jose?

Eric

I didn't care to watch the replay but the report of him lying on his back made me think it could have been a possibility.

Hope the Jocks are ok
 

Just another reminder of how dangerous this sport is for the jockeys.
Hope all are going to be all right.

With a race like this a field of six and two go down and two others are compromised in their chances to win, shouldn't the race be declared for betting purposes a no run and the purses be paid out accordingly to the finishers. Or, am i totally off track here given those that had the winner would get screwed?

PSH

Everyone takes that risk when they place their bets. The people whose horses hit the board should be able to cash their tickets.

There was an extensive article on DRF last week about the problems at Woodbine. It is no longer in their archives but I will reprint it momentarily.

Pletcher and Dutrow will be doing the bulk of their California racing on the dirt course at Santa Anita. The reaon Todd is going, and this is obvious to anybody without an agenda, is simply a numbers one. He has too many horses in all the conditions to only run at Aqueduct and Gulfstream.

Keep 'em coming.

It is nice to know that you know why Pletcher is going. He said publicly he was going for the synthetic surface, not numbers.

"The main reason is Polytrack is out there," Pletcher said. "We thought about going out there before, but one of the concerns was always how safe the surfaces are out there. Obviously, the purses are good ... Mister [Michael] Tabor wants his horses training on Polytrack when possible."
http://www.ntra.com/content.aspx?type=news&id=20159

Then I guess he is shipping back East after Hollywood closes. I hadn't known that. Thanks for the info.

Could be,but I think his right front leg was the problem.Guess it doesn't make much difference.Lets just hope it's the only one for a couple weeks.

Blackthroat,
Sumitas put a link to the blog from Woodbine. It's in the poly room.
Seems the stuff has problems once it's been frosted.
Anyway, I agree with just about all that you've said on this thread.
Hope the jocks are fine, and rip Mountain General.
At least a Flying Zee was the winner, though small consolation, considering.
DTS

I still remember his battles with Bonapaw and Abajo at FG and Churchill. He was a darn good closing sprinter, a G3 winner at CD. His APR record indicates that he had run at a mile or beyond 3 times before 2005, with a win and a third, by the way. It is sad to see grand old warriors like this fall down the class ladder.

woodbine IS having problems. evidently you missed that article. the wax isn't holding the other garbage in the track together. too much fiber coming to the top, and now they are allowing toe grabs to try to help the horses get a grip on it. the cold weather is the key there. just like it would be in new york. turfway had to rework their track after one year of the stuff. this new stuff is not the panacea it was sold as being.

This is old news. How is that HUGE problems? They have to tweak it like any new surface.

well, seeing as how all the horsemen are up in arms about a surface billed to be raceable, and proving it isn't...i'd classify that as a big problem, especially since right now, during the season, they can't exactly tweak it. so they add toe grabs, which many believe is a large problem in itself.

oh, and not OLD news, they just had the article a couple of days ago.

It is the same kickback issue. It has been a problem for quite some time. Do you follow Woodbine at all or know anyone there? There has been an overuse problem that is causing this. They just need to tweak it, cut down on the overuse, and put some water into the track.

no, it wasn't just kickback. the wax isn't holding everything together like it was supposed to.
and why would they allow toe grabs if it was just kickback??

thanks to Sumitas, here's the link:
http://jen-thoroughbreds.blogspot.co...searching.html

You are giving me a blog. You can't be serious. Read the DRF article she is talking about or talk to horsemen at Woodbine. This blogger, and bloggers always have agendas, didn't read the article.

Here it is. I will cut out a useless paragraph or two for copyright reasons.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=1

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Woodbine's racing department held an open forum here late Friday morning and approximately 150 horsepeople took the time to show up at the sales pavilion.

While the agenda was open, the only subject discussed was the state of Polytrack, which has become a source of concern for both management and horsemen.

"We know we have a serious problem," Jamie Martin, Woodbine's senior vice president of racing, told the congregation. "We're addressing it as best we can, with maintenance procedures."

The problem with Polytrack has been kickback, caused by a separation of the Polytrack components during a recent stretch of colder weather. Brian Jabelman, Woodbine's director of racing surfaces, explained that the colder weather has been preventing the wax in the surface from fulfilling its function of holding the material together when the temperatures dropped.

"The fiber has been coming through the top," said Jabelman. "We're trying to break it down, mix it back into the surface. Adding water has helped."

Ray Sabourin, president of the Jockeys Benefit Association of Canada, was one of several riders present at Friday's meeting.

"It's a high kickback," said Sabourin. "It's nothing like we haven't dealt with, with the dirt - it hurts. The track's still safe; it just doesn't seem to be as good as everybody thought it was going to be."

Management and horsemen agreed that the amount of traffic on the Polytrack surface has exacerbated the problem. Woodbine will attempt to ease that situation by extending the training track season by two weeks, to Nov. 26.

Another immediate result of Friday's session has been a change of shoeing policy for Polytrack racing and training. Only flat shoes have been permitted, but, effective Saturday, Nov. 11, toe grabs up to a quarter of an inch will be allowed.

There is no safety issue at all at Woodbine. It is just tweaking that is need like most places. The stuff worked forever in Europe and works fine here. You don't like it for gambling ok, but there is no major problem with it anywhere.

The wax not holding causes the kickback. It just needs to be tweaked, primarily the amount of water that must be used.