Great Article On Synthetic Surfaces
 

Here is a great article about synthetic surfaces. There are long interviews with all different people in the industry giving their opinion on synthetic surfaces. They interview everyone from Dr. Rick Arthur to Bob Baffert to Andy Beyer and many more. This article gives you a fair and balanced view. Some of the people interviewed like synthetic surfaces and other don't. But most of these people admit that there are both positives and negatives to having a synthetic surface. Here is the link:

http://www.marylandthoroughbred.com/...ad_article.htm

There are clearly several positives and several negatives. It's not simply a clear-cut issue. If anyone sees it as clear-cut, then they really don't have all the information. There are clearly several positives and several negatives.

I wish you the best of luck in trying to convince most people of that seemingly obvious fact. For some reason that I haven't been able to understand, this is a very polarizing issue, and people in both camps seem to love nothing more than arguing about it. Many of the pro-poly maniacs say that the people on the other side don't care at all about the health of the animals....which is ridiculous, but some of the anti-poly people delight in nothing more than pointing out every single problem any track with a synthetic surface encounters. I really can't figure out why people insist on seeing this issue as clear-cut or why everyone on both sides seems so intent on portraying all of these surfaces the same way.
It worked at Arlington in '07, and it was (in my mind anyway) a complete disaster at Del Mar.
For the most part I agree with those in the article who say the money that was spent would have been better used in trying to provide the safest possible dirt tracks. But in some places - like here in Chicago - there really seems to be nothing wrong with the synthetic choice either.