Ramon Dominguez at Belmont

[the_fat_man]

I won't respond directly because I just don't think that NYRA should take races off the turf on days when their dirt track is fast or something close to it. And, the condition of the turf on Sunday, visually, was such that it's hard to get someone to buy your argument.


But let me digress.

I can try to sell you on the advantages of POLY: that the races are more predictive, more challenging, more interesting, clearly more turflike, etc. But you wouldn't buy any of it. One advantage that POLY has over dirt that is beyond debate, however, is that horses that can run over one of the surfaces can usually run over the other. Thus, when it rains, entire cards don't need to be wiped out. And while I'm digressing, I mean 'wiped out' in two senses:

1) decimated by scratches

2) throwing almost a complete card of 'wipe-out' type races --- typically the norm for wet tracks.

But let's proceed slowly for all the 'purists' out there: we can add a POLY track at BEL and SAR and run over it on days when the races are off the turf. And, as unpredictable as the turf plays at AQU, rip it out and install POLY. Can you imagine POLY racing in the winter at AQU?