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Thursday, February 14, 2008

"New" Cushion Track Laps Up the Rain

- Trouble at Santa Anita on Wednesday, as the jockeys complained about the track, and the 6th race was delayed for almost a half hour.

"There were some soft spots and some inconsistency with the track," Santa Anita President Ron Charles said. "It was power harrowed. We went down about four inches." [LA Times]
Les Grands Trois and Declan's Moon were late scratches from the feature.

But it seems as if a little rain helped solved the problem. That's right, rain.
Ron Charles, Santa Anita president, said: "It's now in the best shape it's ever been. The rain binded together the loose material."

Said veteran trainer Sandy Shulman: "This track is the best they've ever had here."

Trainers Vladimir Cerin and Barry Abrams were among the others at Clocker's Corner making similar statements. [LA Times]

1 Comment:

Anonymous said...

Lets see, we install an "all weather" track in what is essentially a desert enviroment, which immediately upon opening receives record rainfall.

The track fails to drain.

So the knee jerk reaction is to change the composition of the track to handle this large amount of rainfall we now expect in this era of global warming.

Guess what?

It stops raining in the desert and now we have a track that can not handle long stretches of sunny weather. Shocking.