Another Reason Why Synthetic Tracks are NOT the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-dwyre-santa-anita-20100305-13,0,101184,full.column

It's been awhile since I've had a rant regarding synthetic tracks. I'm overdue.

But the weather and its foibles and the humans and their politics have intervened. The story is less the race and more whether there will be one Saturday. And if not, why not and when will this all be fixed? The entire saga of California horse racing these days has fans demanding, in Jim Healy radio style, "Who goofed? I've got to know."

This will be the 73rd running of the Big Cap. It has never been postponed or cancelled. Saturday's forecast is for 70% chance of rain. In the good old days, before Santa Anita followed the mandate of the California Horse Racing Board and installed a synthetic track in 2008, that wouldn't have been an issue.

On Thursday, one veteran track official described a particularly bad winter in the late 1960s. He said there was constant rain, mudslides, houses sliding down the hills surrounding the track.

"There were some pretty lousy off-tracks, but we never missed a day of racing," he said.

If the Big Cap is rained out Saturday — with two other Grade I races, the Kilroe Mile and the Oaks, as well as the rescheduled Grade III Sham Stakes — it will mark the sixth lost day at this meeting. It will also be the 18th lost day since the installation of synthetics in 2008. Before that, Santa Anita had lost four — count ‘em, four — days to weather since it opened Christmas Day 1934.

Note to California Horse Racing Board and Santa Anita: next time you come up with a brilliant multi-million dollar idea like this, ACTUALLY TEST IT FIRST. *transfers blame from Santa Anita to CHRB* The track has missed more days this season than it's ENTIRE history. Does this not tell you something? If other synthetic tracks don't have this problem, then what's different with your track and theirs??

This was all headed toward a logical conclusion. On Jan. 18, Santa Anita President Ron Charles announced that, after the meeting ended in April, a new track would be installed. The CHRB now said that was OK. Charles didn't specifically say so, but the presumption was that the surface would be good, old-fashioned, time-tested dirt.

But early this week, track owner Frank Stronach plodded into the muck. He said the surface might not be replaced, that it might remain synthetic. In the midst of bankruptcy proceedings involving his parent company, an action from which Santa Anita was recently removed, Stronach seemed to be concerned about the $10-million price tag to replace the track.

Why? You're a businessman. Canceled race days = NO MONEY. Somehow I think trading back to a track that actually drains will help you make money in the long run. And will teach you a lesson about spending millions of dollars without considering what happens when it rains on your track. Why doesn't the CHRB pay for it since it's their idea to make tracks pay for these new surfaces?

In a classic head-scratcher quote, Stronach said, "As an intelligent person, you don't go out and spend $10 million without research."

A hundred years of horses racing on dirt is not research?

He must not have had anything to do with the installation of the synthetic track.

It also has the Breeders' Cup wanting to come to Santa Anita on a permanent basis, but to a track surface it won't accept.

NO. The Breeders' Cup is traditionally held at a different track every year. The BC is a big money event! Not only would it give western bred horses an unfair advantage, but it also makes it difficult for eastern fans (like, you know, me) to experience it.