Residual effects of "overfast" track at SA
 

Does anyone think there will be more horses that eventually have injuries from racing on this surface?

No

In Summations foot caught on fire on the gallop out. Besides that they all came back fine. RUPE any word on injuries out of the SSM

I haven't heard anything yet, but when a track is that hard and that fast you just pray that your horse comes out in one piece.

I don't think there is a single trainer out there that isn't nervous about running over that track.

But that is not an indictment on all synthetic surfaces. Most of the synthetic surfaces are very good and very safe. Unfortunately the job was botched at Santa Anita.

As far as dirt tracks labeled fast go - I saw a statistical study that would suggest the speed of the track and the safety of the surface are two entirely different things.

In fact, when a dirt track labeled fast was producing final times much slower than par, horses who ran over it were less likely to make their next start within 90 days.

When it was much faster than par, horses who ran over it were slightly more likely to make their next start within the next 90 days - than those who ran over the track when it was producing times closer to par for the class levels.

I want to say this was limited to the five major tracks in California. It didn't have to do with track speed and time between starts only -but it didn't get into what kind of injuries and it was more of a study comparing what effects varrying tracks speeds have on a wide variety of things - such as running styles, path and post biases, time between starts, etc etc.

Im not sure how much of a "effect"" it will have. but Speed Channels
TV program ""Pinks"" is taping there next week ! :D

I wouldn't race a really good dirt horse on the surface.

Is it less safe? We have to know what the comparison is with. Speed alone is just one independant factor.

Horses become conditioned to a surface. They also become conditioned to a speed. For the same reasons that human sprinters will occasional train on a decline. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the quickest sprinters at the Santa Anita meet would show big performances on the turf sprints or even the *6.5Downhill showing some very good times. Also wouldn't be a shock to see some of the same horses struggle on the del mar main track should it be playing as it was last meet.

Why do they even need the 7 inches of cushion track? Why don't they just run on the asphalt then? That's obviously an extreme example, but you get my point. If they ran on the asphalt, you would have all kinds of fractures. By the same token, the less cushion they have and the closer they are to the asphalt, and the harder and faster the track is, the more dangerous it is.

That's not to say that there aren't other factors. I'm sure you could have a slow track that was dangerous. But all things being equal, when you have a rock-hard track and you are getting lightning-fast times, you need to be concerned. I know all the jockeys and all the trainers were extremely concerned about it.