Santa Anita Cushion track claims it's first victim
 

Drill down today. He had to be euthanized. Story at DRF.

Sumitas may chime in here later if his mom lets him stay up late on a school night

U calling someone a mommas' boy is like me calling somone fat.

the bid must need his diapers changed

That might be the 3rd or 4th actually.

Diaper change?

call it the track or whatever but any time a horse breaks down it sucks....this one especially for me since I knew him as a baby.

Post of the day.

Polytrack needs its diaper changed, it **** the bed last winter in Florence and has continued to do so.

Sorry guys... it's not goin away...

Your arguments for the most part are pretty accurate, but IT'S NOT GOIN AWAY. Not at S.A., Del Mar, Arlington, or Presque Isle... but maybe Woodbine if you're lucky lol jk

Too Bad, I thought this had the potential to be a nice horse.

Sorry to hear that. I don't like the synthetics but will never understand the efforts people are going to here to make such a huge deal out of every breakdown on them.

I think it's more than that if the injury numbers are comparable to dirt racing at Santa Anita last year then we have quite a little problem here or 10 million poorly spent When the first workouts started coming back as a little fast I thought there might be an issue.

"The works in the morning have been a little quick," said Mike Harlow, Oak Tree's Director of Racing, " Bloodhorse

To me this translates into trouble if the surface is failing to deaden impact and slow times somewhat. We might have a bigger story than you think.

i agree. certainly wasn't this much attention dedicated to every breakdown when we only had two surfaces.
as for the money spent, it didn't come out of my pocket. as for the track, hopefully they will work at fixing any problems immediately, rather than waiting til meets end like del mar.
hollywood seemingly had no problems, perhaps everyone should be in touch with them.

Santa Anita may be playing with the surface a bit too much in an effort to keep a speed favoring track. We will see.

When you have a quarter inch of standing water on an all weather track after 1 rain, you have a major issue. ESPECIALLY when the track is uneven.

That was 1000% correct.
I was watching the SA cam on Saturday, when it rained in LA area, and was amazed that the entire rail area(paths 1 and 2) and a big chunk of the 7-8 path in the stretch were full of water.
The horses were working off the rail and still flying but you could see the splashing as if a little kid was jumping in puddles.

Then Sundays works were much slower than any other day in the past three weeks. Many horsemen complained of an uneven track.

It was almost like they didnt install the drainage system at SA.

Supposedly HP did not have any of the problems that SA had, and the # of workers and times of the works did not alter much.

1. California has FORCED those tracks to change to synthetic surfaces.
2. Everybody continually bitched about how SLOW the times were at Del Mar and what a joke the races were.
3. Everybody is bitching about how FAST the surface is at Santa Anita.

I liked dirt as much as the next guy (or girl).. but what can we do?

something is going on at SA and it's not good. 1/2 inch of rain should easily be handled by any all weather surface. ideally, it should make that surface even tighter but still safe. there is obviously a big problem with the drainage there and i would guess the amount of all weather poly over the asphalt is quite thin.

I wouldnt be shocked if the drainage wasnt installed correctly, or installed at all.

Maybe now we know why Joe Harper wouldnt water the DM track?