I\'m not positive, but I can\'t recall any fatal breakdowns at the recently concluded Saratoga meet despite a lot of miserable weather early in the meet.
I think that deserves some press.
Perhaps a well maintained dirt surface is equal or superior to synthetics in terms of safety.
That\'s one of the things I\'ve been curious about while we wait for long term data on synthetics. If race track managements spent as much money installing new dirt tracks as they did on the new synthetics, perhaps the results would have improved as much or even more. I believe that many of the tracks that switched did so because their dirt tracks were in such poor shape to begin with.
That\'s one of the problems with statistics. It\'s often very difficult to isolate the factor you are trying to analyze even if you are unbiased. When bias becomes a factor, it\'s often possible to convince people of all sorts of nonsense.
Fkach:
Apparently there was only one breakdown/euthanization and it occurred in a turf race.
Said BDHSheets, may they all come home safely. Amen.