Main Track at Hollywood Opens Tomorrow
 

I am very excited about the main track opening tomorrow at Hollywood Park. Alot of our horses had been coming up with nagging injuries on the rock-hard tracks in Southern California. I am very optimistic that the new cushion track is going to make a huge difference in keeping the horses sound. I think we will be able to tell alot very quickly. I bet we will see a big difference immediately. I will let you know in the next 2-3 weeks if there is a difference but I think there will be. One of our trainers in Kentucky says that the horses do not come back with puffy ankles after galloping on the polytrack back there. He sees a big difference in his horses.

Hollypark opens with polytrack?
Damn--I am out of touch with the west.
I might just box 2-4-6 for the first week.
May fall into something!

wow, i've been out of that loop too. i really hope it's a success all around.

They don't actually start racing tomorrow. The main track will be open for training beginning tomorrow. The next Hollywood meet starts in early November.

ahhh, no wonder equibase has no entries, lol.

You bet me to the punch on the opening of the track at Hollywood. There have been afew handicapers on this board that have said they will never play a cushion or polytrack, but I think a few adjustments to your handicaping and you back in the game.

i wagered woodbine this past weekend and couldnt get a sniff over that new track:eek:

You guys working someone over it just to get a peak at it?

Practically all of our horses will be training on it full-time. Even during Santa Anita, most of our horses will be at Hollywood. I don't think any of our horses are working tomorrow. Our two main trainers are in Kentucky right now at the sale.

Our main trainer will have all of his horses at Hollywood full-time. I wish our other trainer would do the same thing but I don't think he will. It won't be an issue after Santa Anita puts in a new track but that won't happen until later next year.

Im deeply saddened that California is laying down Polytrack. There really is no point to Poly in California, not to mention the racing is already subpar. They are grasping at straws, and its sad. The only tracks that can justify a false surface are winter tracks, IE Woodbine, Turfway, maybe the tracks in Ohio if the racing was ever worth a hoot. I think it is a black eye in the industry to have horses unsound enough to need a fake surface to run over. If a horse cant make it over a conventional dirt track, FELLAS, they just arent sound enough to run.

Its Cushion Track not Polytrack. Be informed son, it your racing future.

Whatever synthetic surface it is, its unfortunate that the game has regressed to the point where the animals cant handle a traditional dirt surface. I can understand a synthetic in a cold climate..... where it freezes, where dates are cancelled. I cannot understand why California wouldnt just tear up an unsafe track, and lay a new surface.

If the track maintenance people would put a suitable cushion on the base and didn't seal tracks for rain, I'd be with you on keeping dirt tracks. But track managements seem to hate tracks that are disadvantageous to speed horses; one can speculate about why that is so, but it looks like the only way we'll get safe, fair tracks is to go artificial.

California needs to draw new owners from the other tracks across the nation and they want to remove the old lable of "Califonia's Concrete race tracks". The purse money is there and if synthetic tracks are the future of racing then they are ahead of the other states.

Its a hardsell to move to California simply for the horseracing. The racing just really isnt that good, and the money really isnt better when you factor in cost of living, infact, its probably worse. You have high workers compensation, and everything else is relative.

California isnt going to draw new owners, they would need to cultivate owners who are based in California already. Nobody would go out to California because of "Cushion Track" It would be riduclous. The only thing they are worried about in California, Turfway, Woodbine is the wagering dollar, they dont care about the owners, or the trainers, or horses for that matter. They care about the bottom line, the money.

If they cared about the horses they would stop breeding unsound, inferior racehorses.

All I know about PolyTrack is that my two horses (one now because Picnic Vickee got claimed) loved training on the PolyTrack surface. They came back in great shape. No soreness or swelling in the ankles. People seem to think that soreness or swelling only happens to unsounds horses. This isnt true....granted more low level claiming horses have some sort of injury but not all of them do. Polytrack is good for winter tracks or tracks that get tons of rain.

So true, the fact of the matter is because of the endless sunshine and relatively rare rainy days the tracks in California get baked and hard. I too would love it if they could have a soft cushion but the temperature is just not conducive to it. I remember years ago they used to have horse shows during the off seasons at Santa Anita and I used to show my horses, it wasn't coincidental that the horses would become stocked up and sore after just training and showing over the surface for 2 weeks, it's just much harder on their legs and joints.

It's not that the horses can't handle a traditional dirt surface. they just can't handle the terrible, rock-hard surfaces in California. I don't know if they necessarily needed to put in an artificial surface, but they definitely needed to put in new surfaces because the surfaces out here are terrible. Some are worse than others. Hollywood was the best of the three.

If they could have gotten someone who knows what they are doing to put in a good, safe dirt track, that would have been great. I would have had no problem with that. But something clearly needed to be done.