Running on Rubber

There are people who worry that the horses need to be trained or bred differently.
Breeding is debatable, so they're now charting sires for how their offspring do on synthetic surfaces. But we're too early in this to make a complete conclusion about that. Some trainers alter their training methods a little bit; some don't. Horses are able to recover more quickly after using synthetic tracks, so the number of workouts they were able to do went up by 46 percent at [one track]. They're not as sore afterward.

What about how it changes the sport itself, and accusations of too much uniformity in the different tracks?
Even though a lot of materials are the same, not all the surfaces are the same. They have to be adjusted for the climate, with slightly different materials. If you're a bettor and you're trying to bet those, that's something to consider.

What about synthetics changing the emphasis from speed to stamina?
That is a total myth that just won't go away. The times at Keeneland are two seconds faster than what they are on dirt. Four of the five tracks we've put in are equal to or faster than dirt. Everybody expected [to have to go more slowly throughout and do a big push at the end] when we first put the tracks in, so the jockeys started out that way based on what they'd heard about the tracks in the U.K. Gradually, I think everybody has learned that you can treat this like normal track.

Is it foreseeable that the biggest American horse-racing tracks might go entirely synthetic in the future?
Some of the top tracks in the country have already done it. It's not going to happen overnight. People want to watch and see. It's expensive and it's big to convert to something new from what people have been running on for a long time. You're looking at $6 million to $10 million to convert a track, but the maintenance is much cheaper. Churchill Downs owns four racetracks; they converted Arlington Park, and now they want to see what happens there.

© 2008