I watched that roundtable discussion that TVG had w the president of Turfway, Darrel Vienna, Bruce Headley and the guy from Del Mar (name escapes me).

Anyway, all the Del Mar guy kept saying was, "Well, the track is safer than a regular track"

He kept bringing up the 'safety' issue. No matter what Vienna or Headley said, the del mar guy just was like a broken record, "safety, safety, safety"

Now, i know there is no one i can think of who is NOT for safety, but i believe that he's harping on an issue that no one can argue with.

How can you argue with a guy who says, "yeah, but polytrack is safer"

What do you say to that? You either have to say, "its not safer" or "i don't care about safety" There's no other argument you can really use.

I will say this.....as far as i know, tracks hardly ever do something that's NOT going to generate handle. Polytrack is a project that is not designed to increase betting...although, Turfway has shown profits since installing it.

Personally, i did wager some on Turfway. I just wanted to become familiar with polytack because i know its the wave of the future.

California is notorious for speed favoring tracks....with the installation of Polytrack, i can't imagine it will be MORE speed favoring. The races currently at Hollywood are very hard to bet. Its almost impossible to gain ground. Once horses establish position they just maintain that all the way. The only way a closer wins if there's an absolute cut throat duel AND the horses are bad. I've seen cutthroat duels where the top 2 horses go all the way around the track and both hit the tri or super.

To increase the soundness of horses at Hollywood, they should just make all races 2 furlongs.....no need running the extra 4F because whoever has the lead after 2 wins anyway, why burn the horses up running an extra 4 when the running positions aren't going to change.

As a handicapper, i'd like it better if not all 3 major so cal tracks did the same thing...that way i can play against polytrack horses who look great on paper when they go back to the conventional surface.