Poly Feet ?
 

It occurred to me after a weekend of watching Keeneland races, that there might be a POLY FOOT. There are mud feet and turf feet, so why not POLY feet. Has anyone been trackside and looked at the feet of the horses that have done well there ? Also, has anyone been paying attention to the poly track at Turfway or Woodbine and noticed whether there have been any changes in the surface during the racing season that either track maintenance or weather has done to it ? :confused:

this is PURE SPECULATION on my part but it seems like some of the complaint about poly is that horses slip on it or have trouble getting into it... therefore I would think that a horse with a cuppy foot (vs ones that have fairly flat soles) would do better on the surface...But of course that contradicts the trend we have seen where turf horses are more successful over it (since most turf horses have 'platters')...but perhaps that is just a function of turf horses being more accustomend to a surface with greater 'give' to it.

Do you think it's a possibility that some of the trainers may have their farriers working on getting a slightly different hoof angle to aid in "gripping" the track? Every experience I've had with angles being messed with has ended in disaster, but just wondering... :confused:

Do you think its a possibility we could have more threads regarding the polytrack surface? 6-7 per day isnt cutting it.

Ask and you shall receive... :D

I have no idea ...I don't talk to trainers...at least not like some others around here....but I guess nothing would surprise me, if the horse were going to be running over it all the time. It wouldn't make sense to experiment with hoof angles for one run...and I too have seen some messy outcomes when farriers try to play god and change a horse's natural angle...my own horse was a complete disaster when i bought him, it took 8 months to get his feet right.

at least this one might have some merit rather than either exalting it or bashing it...

Mine too, as well as my sister's t-bred. When they raced him, they kept his toes a lot longer than they should have and he already had a natural tendency to walk on his heels... it made it that much worse when they tried to "fix" that problem.

a TB with crushed/underrun heels is like rum and coke...they just go together;)

Yep, so I've got no clue as to why they tried to correct something that was just natural for him... it's beyond me.

I just wondered if some trainers were going to attempt that... especially if more graded races are going to be run on the poly.

I agree, this one could have some worth.

But Tim's right, this board has been dominated by the same tired debate about Polytrack for too long. That and the Gomez threads just needs to go away for good.