Horse Racing: a Look at Del Mar's New Polytrack Surface

Del Mar's summer racing meet, one of the most anticipated of the year, is the first meet in Southern California to be run over the now popular Polytrack racing surface that has been installed at Arlington Park in Illinois and Keenland Racecourse and Turfway Park in Kentucky.

The success of Polytrack at Del Mar is a given. As Marco Ramirez, exercise rider for one of SoCal's most popular trainers, Doug O'Neil, recently stated, "The horses are going to love this." He was referring to the horses running over the Polytrack surface. Ramirez was there to test the new surface on the day that Del Mar unveiled it. He gave it a glowing, thumbs up and nobody should be surprised.

As any horse racing fan knows, if the horses love it, then the trainers love it. If the trainers love it, then the owners love it. If the owners love it, then the handicapper's love it.

The reason for this is simple. Real handicappers, also known as horseplayers, or horse racing gamblers, enjoy placing wagers on overlays, that is, horses whose odds are higher on the tote board than they should be. Overlays occur in large fields. Large fields occur when trainers and owners choose to run their horses on artificial surfaces such as Polytrack and Hollywood Park's cushion track.

The more money pumped in to the pools, the amount of money wagered on the chance of a single event to occur such as a horse to win, to place or to show, ensure higher pay-outs on overlays. The reason that trainers and owners love Polytrack, or any artificial surface for that matter, is because of the lack of fatal breakdowns that occur when horses run over these artificial surfaces. According to bloodhorse.com, between Jan 1^st and Feb 11^th of this year there were four breakdowns on Turfway Park's Polytrack surface. During the same period last year, over Turfway Park's conventional dirt surface, there were thirteen fatal breakdowns. The four breakdowns that occurred during the period between Jan 1^st and Feb 11^th are attributed to inclement weather that affected the Polytrack surface. Because Polytrack is an artificial surface, most racing fans agree that this sort of inclement weather issue can be prevented in the future.

If that is the case, then Del Mar should expect no fatal breakdowns during their meet. Time will tell of course, but it's a good wager that Del Mar will have a fairly safe meet for its million dollar horses because of the excellent weather in the area during the Del Mar meet. Once caveat, of course, is the fact that Del Mar is close to the ocean. How the ocean winds and/or the ocean tides will affect the push and pull on Polytrack is something that has never been studied.

In fact, the infancy of Polytrack provides a major obstacle for all handicappers. Traditional axioms regarding wagering on horse races such as speed on the lead can be thrown-out when wagering on Polytrack surface races. There is not enough empirical knowledge for any handicapper to truly make a decision on a horse's chances to win a race. Speed ratings, like those created by the brilliant handicapping theorist, Andrew Beyer, have proven to be iffy at best when applied to Polytrack.

This, of course, is a good thing. The more difficult it is for a true handicapper to find a winner in a race means that overlays should be abundant. Overlays raise the chances of the average fan, or newcomer to the sport, to find a nice priced long-shot to place his or her two dollars on. Creating new fans is at the top of the list of things that horse racing has to do to succeed.

Polytrack will help the horse racing industry to do just that. By forever preventing another breakdown such as that suffered by the very popular Barbaro in the 2006 Preakness Stakes will ultimately lead to horse racing becoming, once again, a family oriented sport.

Del Mar has done the right thing in installing Polytrack. The State of California's decree, that all tracks must install an artificial surface or face closure, has been a wonderful thing. Hollywood Park's cushion track has been a resounding success, and the Breeder's Cup just announced that it has offered its 2008 event, the signature event in the horse racing industry, to Santa Anita Park. The Breeder's Cup did so because of Santa Anita Park's willingness to install a new cushion track.

Let us hope that all tracks throughout the country, in particular those on the east coast, follows the California tracks' lead.