DEL MAR – Polytrack Year II, which concludes with the closing of the summer thoroughbred season here today, qualifies by most assessments as a success.
But not as an unqualified success.
“It has been better than anything I've seen in 25 years as far as horse safety at this track for this meeting,” said racing secretary Tom Robbins. The basic numbers tend to back up that statement.
With one day left in the 43-day season, there have been eight horses euthanized after breakdowns, five in afternoon races, three in morning workouts. All were on the Polytrack synthetic main surface (none on the Jimmy Durante turf course). Two others died of heart attacks during morning workouts.
Last year, the first on Polytrack, there were six fatal breakdowns on the new surface, only two during afternoon racing, and five others on the turf course, four during racing. In 2006, the fatal breakdowns numbered 18, with 14 coming on the main dirt track and 10 of them during afternoon racing programs.
Year II of Polytrack was also the one in which Del Mar management, having studied the new stuff for a season and an offseason, agreed to new watering and maintenance programs in an effort to achieve greater consistency of the surface from morning workouts to afternoon races. It was also an effort to produce faster times than the molasses-slow ones of '07 and fairer opportunities for “speed” horses than that stamina-biased surface did.
The tempo was measurably up. Winners came from both on and off the pace. Handicappers such as the Union-Tribune's Bob Ike considered the track to be fair.
But if '08 was better than '07, it certainly didn't set the bar impossibly high for '09, as Robbins readily admitted.
“There were some additional problems in the morning as opposed to Year One,” Robbins said. “(In) the effort to achieve some more comparable times in the afternoon we may have slightly compromised the mornings. We gradually backed off watering a little (partway through the meeting) and that improved the track in the morning.”
In a poll of the top four trainers, who will have combined for nearly 400 starters by the end of racing today, Jeff Mullins was by far the biggest critic.
“It (stinks), that's all I can tell you,” Mullins said when asked for an opinion on Polytrack II. “We lost one horse last year and I've probably sent out half a dozen this year (with injuries) and we had to put one to sleep. . . . I'll welcome dirt.”
The Southern California circuit moves on to the traditional dirt surface at Fairplex Park in Pomona on Friday.
“It's better than the dirt they had here two years ago, but I don't think it's better for the horses than a general dirt track,” Mullins said. “There have been a lot of things the public doesn't see, hind end and soft tissue injuries. Some horses come back from those things and some of 'em don't.”
In an attempt to quantify the safety factor beyond fatalities, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club is working with the Southern California Equine Foundation, and its hospital administrator, Karen Klawitter. Statistics compiled this summer show that there were 389 X-rays of horses taken at Del Mar through Monday, the penultimate racing day of the meeting. There were 364 such images last year.
The figures include X-rays taken for precautionary purposes before completion of a private sale. Klawitter said pre-purchase images average 3-7 per week and are fairly constant from meeting to meeting, year to year.
In 2005 and '06, the past two years of the dirt track here, the radiograph totals were 456 and 439, respectively. Given the number of equine hospitals to choose from in San Diego County and the Southern California area in general, and the number of nonracing type horses sent to such places, assessing the number of significant but not catastrophic injuries here this summer is problematical. But Klawitter, who is in as good a position as anyone to judge, said: “My overall impression is that it's down. Significantly down.”
Leading trainers other than Mullins gave Polytrack II mixed reviews.
“I can only speak for myself and I've done OK,” said meet champion John Sadler. “Compared to last year the track is a little easier to run on in the afternoon. But in the morning there have been some problems and I think it has been a little tougher than last year.
“We've had a few more injuries and a lot of horses coming up sore (in the hindquarters) or with sore feet.”
Leandro Mora, top assistant to Doug O'Neill, said it had been a phenomenal meeting, healthwise, for the O'Neill stable of horses.
“We've got 44 horses stabled here and only one got injured and it wasn't that bad of an injury. I think the track (overall) was better than last year,” Mora said.
O'Neill made the dirt-to-polytrack transition at Del Mar best of all trainers, following a title on dirt in 2006 with another last year, making it three championships in the past five seasons, a run interrupted by Mullins in '05 and Sadler this season). Mora said the stable has stuck to the usual training routines and methods used at its Hollywood Park base with one slight exception.
“The shoes are (filed down) a little more flat,” Mora said. “We're all learning and adapting to these surfaces, the horses and the people, too.”
Mike Mitchell, tied with Mullins for second in the trainer standings with one more win than O'Neill, said: “If you compare it to a dirt track, it's much better. I've had my injuries this year and it has seemed like it takes a little harder toll on 2-year-olds than it does on older horses that are more mature and more legged up.
“It's better, but it's still not quite right. There's something missing and I don't know exactly what it is.
“These synthetics were sold as not needing much maintenance and that's just not true. They need the right maintenance or after a while, the surfaces get ground down under the pounding.”
