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NICHOLAS GODFREY |
Weblog: It's a funny old world
Raven's Pass: would he have won the Classic if the race was run on dirt?
PICTURE: EDWARD WHITAKERDebate rages on over synthetic surfaces
RECENT news that Santa Anita may well rip up its troubled synthetic surface to return to conventional dirt has been met with something approaching incredulity on this side of the Atlantic.
There is a simple reason why, as my Kentucky-based colleague David Ashforth has demonstrated in more than one article in the Racing Post in recent months.
David, one journalist who certainly doesn't form his opinions via Wikipedia, believes the evidence is now compelling: artificial tracks are less likely to produce fatal injuries in racehorses than the conventional dirt alternative.
To many of us at a distant remove in Britain, that might seem a valid enough argumentfor case closed.
However, the debate is plainly far less straightforward in the States, where there is huge resistance to the advent of all-weather tracks.
The more persuasive arguments come from a serious school of thought suggesting that synthetic tracks may actually bring about an increase in injuries, particularly in the hind-leg region.
But there is significant opposition on a more emotive level. Put simply, they just don't like 'em.
Several respected US commentators reckon all-weather surfaces should be consigned to the dustbin.
For example, the Blood-Horse's Dan Liebman offers a reasoned assessment in a recent blog entitled ‘So Long Synthetic', pointing to persistent maintenance problems at Santa Anita as reason enough to go back to dirt.
Liebman says: "Even those who support synthetic surfaces - and this is certainly not a total condemnation of them - understand how wise it would be to replace Santa Anita's surface with dirt, which should have been done in 2008 when the initial problems caused the track to be ripped up and replaced."
He adds: "Perhaps it is that synthetic surfaces simply work better in areas with colder climates (such as Woodbine and Turfway Park), or places with a small number of racing dates and small horse populations (like Keeneland). Again, I don't know.
"But I do know the surface at Santa Anita was a disaster and a decision to return to dirt seems to make sense."
Trainer and attorney Darrell Vienna is more extreme. "Today the installation of synthetic tracks in California is best characterised as a failed experiment," he suggests in another Blood-Horse piece.
"None of the synthetic surfaces lived up to the marketing hype. The synthetic tracks require incredible amounts of maintenance . . . and have not proved to be kinder or safer.
"With each passing meet the synthetics began to lose lustre. Horses began presenting new types of injuries. Hind leg lamenesses increased. Soft-tissue injuries began to occur with alarming frequency.
"The return of natural surfaces appears inevitable. We see Santa Anita as the first in a new wave of tracks to abandon synthetics."
Strong stuff indeed, and by no means an isolated view in the US, where there remains considerable scepticism over their supposed superiority when it comes to equine welfare.
What's more, several US experts have even gone so far as to claim that it is not dirt tracks per se that are a relative danger; rather, it is how they are maintained.
High-profile fatal injuries sustained by the likes of Barbaro, Eight Belles and George Washington in recent years perhaps skew the argument against.
But perhaps those of us on the British sidelines need to remind ourselves that American racing is synonymous with conventional dirt.
All-weather racing is totally different in nature - hence European success on the main track at Santa Anita in the last couple of seasons at the Breeders' Cup.
Regardless of that event's risible claims to world-championship status, even the most ardent supporters of AW racing would surely agree that the last two Breeders' Cups could barely even claim to be end-of-season American championships with dirt horses so disadvantaged.
Frankly, to expect America to get rid of dirt is akin to asking Britain and Ireland to do away with jump racing (vastly more dangerous, by the way).
And, at the risk of being seen as an apologist for dirt surfaces, perhaps it is worth recognising that in recent years the Epsom Derby has a worse record in recent years for equine injury than the Kentucky Derby.
All-weather tracks are expensive to install and maintain, which means that however many of the major tracks put them in - not that there are plans for any new ones at present - the more run-of-the-mill venues are likely to retain the dirt.
Then again, such low-level meets dominated by poor horses, kept going by medication, racing for poor purses on rock-hard tracks are probably nobody's idea of equine heaven.
Either way, this is anything but an open-and-shut case across the Atlantic. Whatever we may think in Britain.
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