Re: Keeneland Polytrack (585 Views)
Posted by:
richiebee (IP Logged)
Date: September 22, 2006 11:35AM
Very well reasoned approach. I hope Polytrack makes winners off all of you, keeps horses sound and trainers sane. Poly got a ringing endorsement this week when Todd Pletcher revealed that one of the reasons he was setting up shop out west was that important owner Tabor wanted his expensive stock to race and train over Poly.
Welcome to the brave new world. I hope Poly saves the game. If it keeps horses sounder, it might level the playing field in that the supertrainers with their high tech pain meds may not have as big an edge. I hope Tabor buys a $20 million yearling next year.
But lets keep variety in the game. There are still some natural grass fields in baseball. Lets leave the old fashioned dirt strips at Fair Grounds and at Churchill and at the 3 New York tracks. (The inner dirt can go synthetic--IMO the inner course at Aq was a progenitor of Poly). Lets see some racing over sloppy tracks, muddy tracks, drying out tracks. Let an old bastard like me who can still remember the mud marks in the Form have a couple more unlikely scores off obscure wet track breeding (I used to bet the descendants of Hagley blindly on off tracks).
As far as I am concerned, the dirt strips at Belmont, Saratoga and Churchill are hallowed ground. I hope these places will be to racing what Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and that place up in the Bronx are to baseball.
I've rolled this quote out so many times, but it seems appropriate here. Tug McGraw, the flaky NY Met relief pitcher, was asked whether he preferred playing on natural grass or Astroturf. "I don't know" Tug replied, "I never smoked Astroturf"