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In the week leading up to this year's Breeders' Cup, observers who remained trackside at the conclusion of morning training would have spotted a young man with a short bristly moustache lug an unusual looking contraption around the two ovals at the heart of Del Mar. If these trackside observers hung around long enough, they would have spotted this two-legged interloper stop to place down and trigger what appeared to be a miniature guillotine, twiddle with a few buttons, then either jump back into his golf cart or set off...

The definition of insanity, some smart person once said, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. In a twist on that aphorism, Kaleb Dempsey, laboratory manager of the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory (RSTL), explained one recent afternoon how part of the problem with the way racetracks maintain their surfaces is that, by virtue of their tools, they have been restricted to doing the same things over and over and expecting the same kind of results. Which is where a new bespoke piece of equipment, currently...