Another breakdown at Turfway

[todko]

1st race. 3 horse. Goes down hard in the backstretch. That's 2 breakdowns in 2 days.

For the first time, Turfway is having to deal with cold weather. Woodbine has seen it's share of breakdowns too. Maybe it's the vertical drainage system. If the drainage system gets clogged with fiber, tire chunks, spandex, whatever -- the water will have no place to go -- it will most likely pool and freeze -- produce hard spots underneath the poly surface.

The track has less than 2 degrees of banking.

Last year, we had abnomally warm weather. We had days of 60 degrees in January. Poly didn't have a true winter test last year.

What makes you so sure it's the tracks fault??? How do you know that it isn't the trainer sending a sore horse out that shouldn't be running?? Polytrack is NOT going to keep a sore horse from breaking down.

[pmayjr]

Guys... in the bend it's gonna take years of speculation, denails, and trends to truly see if Poly is any safer than dirt. I'm still drinkin the kool aid right now that the stuff is safer.

Three days in a row at Turfway there has been a breakdown.
Wow, this stuff is just great.
Blue Eyes, I agree with what you are saying, running sore horses will break em down. But this stuff won't stop it either, its a con game like the balc construction paper the Nigerians sell you(washing solution costs extra).

[The Bid]

hahaha, we will send you 15 million, but you need to pay us 100k for the bleach to clean off the money. What buffoon will go for that deal, sign me up

Originally Posted by oracle80

Three days in a row at Turfway there has been a breakdown.
Wow, this stuff is just great.
Blue Eyes, I agree with what you are saying, running sore horses will break em down. But this stuff won't stop it either, its a con game like the balc construction paper the Nigerians sell you(washing solution costs extra).

And that's exactly what I'm saying. Polytrack never claimed to keep horses from breaking down. Three days in a row of horses breaking down. You know what that really means? It means Polytrack doesn't ward off the butcher trainer. The butcher trainer "thinks" his sore horse won't break down on this surface. A few years ago a friend of mine was killed at Turfway. Had Polytrack been installed could it been avoided? I doubt it. It was clearly the trainers fault that horse broke down. Of course, the track took the blame but not everyone knew the true story behind the horse and trainer.

[repent]

score one for the good guys.

this crap is not only toxic, but it is only marginally safer than real dirt.
Im sorry, but horses' lives are not important enough to spend $10M on a bunch of toxic crap.
I say the more breakdowns on polytrack, the better.
those morons spent $10M for NOTHING.

Repent

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by oracle80

Three days in a row at Turfway there has been a breakdown.
Wow, this stuff is just great.
Blue Eyes, I agree with what you are saying, running sore horses will break em down. But this stuff won't stop it either, its a con game like the balc construction paper the Nigerians sell you(washing solution costs extra).

Oracle, You have said several times that polytrack is just a con game. Do you have any evidence of that?

There is a ton of evidence that shows exactly the opposite. The horses are staying much sounder and the fields are bigger as a result. You can talk to any tainer out here and they will tell you that they see a huge difference in their horses. The horses come back every morning and their legs are cold and tight, wheras before they would come back with heat in their feet and ankles. For you to call it a con game is absurd.

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

Oracle, You have said several times that polytrack is just a con game. Do you have any evidence of that?

There is a ton of evidence that shows exactly the opposite. The horses are staying much sounder and the fields are bigger as a result. You can talk to any tainer out here and they will tell you that they see a huge difference in their horses. The horses come back every morning and their legs are cold and tight. For you to call it a con game is absurd.

Its ABSOLUTELY a con game as is has been MARKETED!!!
Its been marketed as "maintenance free" wrong!!! Its been marketed as averting catastrohic breakdowns WRONG!!
Now you can tell me in reality we should know that these thinsg arent true, but both I and Sent To Std have shown you the presentations and websites by soem of these marketers, and they are lying.
It does need maintenance, it can be screwed up, and breakdowns will continue to happen.
So, its a con game.
Anything sold with tricks and half truths or flat out lies, is a con game.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by pmayjr

Guys... in the bend it's gonna take years of speculation, denails, and trends to truly see if Poly is any safer than dirt. I'm still drinkin the kool aid right now that the stuff is safer.

Where are you getting your information? It's not going to take years to figure out if it's safer. They already know that it's safer. It's not rocket science to see how your horses come back every morning. Over the polytrack, the horses come back in good shape every morning. They come back and their legs are cold and tight. There's not any doubt that it's much safer. The horses are staying so much sounder that field size is already increasing quite a bit. Even at Hollywood this meet, the average field size has gone up by about one horse per race. That's already a big improvement.

The main problem with polytrack is that there are still a lot of things that they don't know about it. They really don't know that much about how it will hold up and perform under different conditions. They really don't know that much about the best way to maintain it under different conditions. They are kind of just going by trial and error right now.

Anyway, we know that polytrack does well in moderate conditions but based on the issues at Woodbine and Turfway, maybe polytrack does not hold up that well in the extreme cold. Maybe they need to tweek the ingredients a little bit for tracks where the weather is really cold.

Polytrack is still a brand new thing. I'm sure there will be some problems with it here and there but I don't think the problems will be anything that they can't deal with. Just because there will be some minor problems here and there, it hardly means that polytrack is dead. Quite to the contrary, most trainers think it's the future of racing.

Here is what a trainer at Hollywood Park told me the other day when I asked him about some of the minor problems with the track over at Hollywood. He said, "When the cushion-track at Hollywood is at its worst, it's still better than the surface at Santa Anita at it best."

So despite some of the problems they have had with polytrack, overall the owners and trainers are very happy with it. If you want to call polytrack "an experiment", the experiment has gone very well so far despite a few bumps in the road. In other words, people in the industry are more confident now in polytrack, than they were a year or two ago. You guys are totally misreading the situation if you think that polytrack has not been a big success so far. Overall, people are extremely happy with it. In fact, it has been recieved so well thus far, that more and more tracks are now planning on putting it in. As you have heard, Arlington is probably going to put it in.

Originally Posted by pmayjr

Guys... in the bend it's gonna take years of speculation,
denials, and trends to truly see if Poly is any safer than dirt.

Any improvements towards safety should not rest solely on the racing surface.
Improvements to the starting gate has long been overlooked.

For those of us who watch the head-on replays of the starts,
it's laughable that absolutely nothing was done
after Barbaro "gate breakthrough" in the Preakness
only to reload and severly injure himself on National Television.

It's only a matter of time before the gate comes into play
in another major televised race.

Sad but true.

[The Bid]

I dont know if thats a fact. People always say horses are so smart.......... Some are smart, but they are animals. Dogs are smart, they still run out in the street and get hit by cars. Cats are smart, they still piss on the rug. Horses may be smart, but as far as being smart enough to decide when they think they will break down, nope. I think most horses put on the track to run, will run, regardless of the level of soreness they are experiencing. Thats what they are trained to do, they dont stand in the starting gate and think.......Man this right front I have is really hurting, I better not switch to this lead or Im going to breakdown.

[paisjpq]

Originally Posted by Dixie Porter

FACT:

Sore horses are less likely to breakdown than horses feeling GOOD. Sore horses USUALLY try to take care of themselves. Once in a great while they will injure themselves "getting off" an injury. Horses feeling "no pain" but that are physically compromised have the greatest percentage of breakdowns (especially catastrophic breakdowns).

Lisa is usually pretty good on this stuff. The rest of you clowns are TOTALLY hopeless when it comes to training and running thoroughbreds.
That includes all trainers, owners and vets on here that subscribe to this BS.

Amazing...I completely agree with you...

on the first half anyway...not so much on the second...

Three days, three snappers, I'm tellin ya this is great stuff.

[The Bid]

16 snappers this month, out of that 25% have broke down on poly. There are 3 polytracks running races now.

[paisjpq]

Originally Posted by oracle80

Three days, three snappers, I'm tellin ya this is great stuff.

you're kidding me with this right? I mean you are not actually celebrating the death of 3 horses because it suits your argument about polytrack...that is so classless I don't even have words for it.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by paisjpq

you're kidding me with this right? I mean you are not actually celebrating the death of 3 horses because it suits your argument about polytrack...that is so classless I don't even have words for it.

You misunderstood him. He didn't mean the horses breaking down was great stuff. He was sarcastically saying that polytrack is great stuff.

[Kasept]

As I've said before, and having deleted the silliness, I won't have nonsense from elsewhere spilling over here... So we're ending that portion of the discussion please...

As to the matter at hand, the objectionable element of the 'three breakdowns, three days' post centered around the use of the word 'snappers'... It disgusted me and infuriated Bethani, who works hands-on with horses FOR A LIVING.

I privately and quietly asked those that used the word to refrain from using it again as I think it is callous and demonstrates to race fans a portrait of thoughtlessness. Rather than simply acknowledge the inappropriateness though, I can see this is being taken in another direction. Bethani can address Mike's thoughts herself, but I'll simply say that the germination of the issue is the word 'snappers'... IMO, using that term rendered the rest of the post indefensible as to intent.

And since she won't say it herself but was clearly challenged above as to credibility: Bethani unquestionably knows more, and will continue to know more, about racehorses, (and most other equine), their physiology, care and maintainence, than virtually anyone here.