Polytrack, Hold the Curlin

In 'kinda sad but not really' news, Benny the Bull has been retired due to a chipped ankle. He won 9 out of 17 and was a sprinting beast in a good way.

To me, it's encouraging that Rick Dutrow was proactive about diagnosing the problem and making the best decision.

Meanwhile, Curlin is primed to run at the "Spa" in the Woodward on dirt this Saturday, August 30th.

I hope he schools the field and chalks up another win.

And I'm genuinely glad that he'll be racing on pure, natural dirt, mainly because of tradition. I really do like the way everything is at Saratoga...seriously.

So, it's not that I even want to specifically replace the dirt surfaces in New York.

Obviously, a state mandate would change the landscape at all NYRA tracks.

I do want to make racing safer. I think improving the surfaces horses race on would increase the safety of those horses and the jockeys who ride them.

As Bill Finley recently pointed out, maybe the difference between dirt and synthetic surfaces isn't as big as the hype would say.

From what I can gather, polytrack seems like it slows down all of the horses at all of the tracks where it has been installed, ala Kentucky and California mostly. That's right, I'm saying the horses all run slower on polytrack.

Yeah. I said it. So what?

Here's a little fact that about horse races: they last from just under one minute to just over two minutes...mostly.

Who cares if Curlin's owner ever took a risk and let him loose on synthetics, like say Santa Anita on Saturday, October 25th? Hypothetically.

My guess is that because he's so good the surface would slow him down a few seconds in a 9 or 10 furlong race, but another way of saying that is that instead of going 40 mph during the race, he'll only be going 37 mph.

Oh.

Yet another beat complaint about the ills of polytrack that I'm not buying.