Commentary: Keeping the Promise

Eric Mitchell, editorial director and editor-in-chief of The Blood-Horse, shares his thoughts on tracks switching from synthetic surfaces back to dirt footing, and a promise to keep racehorses safe.
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Eric Mitchell, editorial director and editor-in-chief of The Blood-Horse, shares his thoughts on tracks switching from synthetic surfaces back to dirt footing, and a promise to keep racehorses safe.


The cause behind the adoption of synthetic racetrack surfaces was a noble one—reduce the number of catastrophic breakdowns to a negligible level.

For the most part, the all-weather surfaces that were installed properly did just that. The number of main-track breakdowns at Keeneland fell to 0.97 per 1,000 from 2009 through 2013. During those same five years the overall rate of breakdowns on all surfaces was 1.91 per 1,000 starts and 2.08 per 1,000 dirt starts. Some horseplayers complained about the inability to handicap for synthetics when Keeneland switched, but it didn’t prevent them from betting, and many seem to have forgotten all the complaining they did about the track bias with Keeneland’s old dirt surface.

Synthetics offered a lot of promise but also came with a lot of headaches. The biggest was the lack of knowledge about maintenance and all the adjustments that had to be made for a particular brand of synthetic to fit the climate of a track. Then not all the synthetics were installed the right way. Santa Anita installed two synthetic surfaces between 2007 and 2010, trying to get it right before eventually throwing in the towel and going back to dirt. Apparently all-weather surfaces might not be best suited to the exceptionally sunny climes of Southern California. The surface does seem to thrive in cooler and wet weather—as Woodbine, Presque Isle Downs, Turfway Park, and even Golden Gate Fields in Northern California have shown

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Eric Mitchell is a Editorial Director and Editor-in-Chief The Blood-Horse magazine.

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