synthetic racing surfaces

Under the toughest of spotlights, the industry's collective eyes often turn to the stuff under foot. At least, that's what trainer Mark Casse did in a widely-shared TDN Q&A. "I think we really, seriously, need to look at more synthetic tracks," Casse said, triggering yet another cavalcade of commentary on the conceived benefits and blights of synthetic surfaces. "I believe in them. I believe they've got plenty of data to back that up." Former TDN writer Lucas Marquardt followed it up with an analysis of race-day fatality data through The...

To the Editor: The campaign to abolish dirt racing in favor of synthetic surfaces may be well-intentioned, but is a dangerous knee-jerk overreaction that would accomplish little but the destruction of Thoroughbred racing as we know it. These advocates seem to have forgotten that we tried this a generation ago, when Southern California, Keeneland, and Dubai all switched to synthetic racing--and then tore out those tracks when it became obvious that they were producing misleading results and undeserving Grade I winners and champions. As Bob Baffert correctly said at the...