first arlington, now del mar
 

del mar is already worried about the amount of injuries at the track. two different tracks having a bad time of it--this can't be the surfaces. it's gotta be the horses. aren't we still experiencing the affects of mrls??? less horses to run, same # of races to fill. and as one person elsewhere was quoted in a newspaper article, there is no 'off season' for horses to rest and recuperate.
it can't just be a change in surface from say hollywood to del mar, right? wouldn't those #'s remain consistent from year to year if that was the case?

Notorious
 

The point about the horses being bad has been debated a long time as well. Some like to blame Raise A Native sire line

Actually, Del Mar is notorious for break downs. I am not just being contrary. I don't have access to stats but one of the first things I heard about Delmar was they have a lot of breakdowns. Hello comes to mind at the moment.

i don't know that the horses are bad, but there has to be an answer other than the surface, especially considering that arlington has had their track looked over twice, and nothing has been pinpointed. the track isn't at fault, so what does that leave?

as for del mar, i saw earlier that they are concerned about the injuries suffered already, and of course SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. nothing probably will actually come of it....but as long as SOMETHING IS DONE than everything will be fine, right??

Turfway installed polytrack and the amount of fatal breakdowns decreased significantly. They are now "tweeking" the surface to reduce kickback.

It's getting close to "high noon" for horse racing. Either they improve the safety or the government will step in and outlaw dirt racing.

After seeing Three Hour Nap break down in the Washington Park Handicap, we see yet more evidence that the "its not the track, its the horses and the trainers" garbage gets put to rest for good. THN was not overraced, was trained by a very capable trainer (Hugh Robertson), and is a graded stakes winner. I guess some people think until one of theirs breaks down, there's no problem.

ALl Cali tracks have to go to a synthetic surface so they are addressing the issue. But MRLS has nothing to do with soundness of a horse.

It is shameful how some of these tracks just pass the buck.

i wasn't suggesting that mrls caused unsoundness. i was suggesting that having less horses to fill races might make trainers enter more often than they normally would so races would fill.