Turfway Stigma

Originally Posted by moodwalker

Agreed on all counts.

I don't think I want to buy a 7 figure yearling and run him over that surface if he is bred top and bottom to like the dust.

The Astro-turf trend passed, and this will too.

The more and more I think about it, the more I agree that it is a money thing like you have pointed out so many times.

In the end, the higher-ups don't make the safety of $5,000 claimers their top priority.

This "safer for the horses" thing will be cited as the reason over and over again.

The article written by the Janks woman from Arlington summed it up pretty good for me. If we would stop letting redneck trainers enter horses who have been neglected and can barely stand up, the breakdowns would decrease.

Mood,
Janks spoke what so many people in the business have told me repeatedly.
At the Spa I asked a life long racetrack guy whos trained grade one winners about it and he said the exact same damn thing that Janks said, as if he had read her article.
Bob Fox, now a regular on Steves radio show, replied that he was one of the few outspoken polytrack critics on the record.
Many trainers feel like janks but are afraid to be outspoken about it.
All they need is deeper dirt. And yes mood, catering to the lowest end of your market(cheap claimers) so that they can make more starts makes very little sense to me. At cheap tracks perhaps. But you don't rearrange the whole game to suit the very cheapest group of your overall product.