Bob,

I don't disagree with any of your sentiments, but why the rush?

Shouldn't a change of this magnitude be done cautiously?

I think tracks like Woodbine and Turfway were excellent choices as "long term" testing grounds for determining things like safety of horses, safety of jockeys, health related issues from kickback, maintenance costs, durability of the surface, weather related issues, impact on betting handle, impact on field sizes, impact on breeding, impact on horse values, etc.....

Granted, there is some positive information coming in on breakdowns, but not everything is positive. Also, "long term" implies that we may not have many of the answers to these and other questions for 5-10 years.

All that said, I think at a minimum CA and Keeneland rushed.

If I were the owner or trainer of a high quality 3YO that was gearing up for the Derby, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell I would prep on poly (definitely not his last race before the Derby). If my horse ran either exceptionally well or poorly I would have zero faith that his form on poly would translate into anything valuable to me as far as understanding what his chances were in the Derby.

I see that as a major problem for some of the poly preps unless the Derby also switches to poly.

Some may disagree with my thinking here, but some will agree. I fully expect it to have implications for Derby prep races and all sorts of other races once CA is 100% poly and other major tracks follow. I'm not sure everyone has thought out all the implications of some of these moves.



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2007 10:07PM by fkach.