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New York Racing Industry Studying Nationwide Adoption of Synthetic Tracks

Could America’s gymnastic horse racetracks, from Santa Anita to Saratoga, presently live carpeted entirely with synthetic substance surfaces? That’s exactly what a young committee constituted by the New House of York Racing Association (NYRA) wants to discover.

The racing body’s All-Weather Surfaces Committee is composed of racing manufacture stakeholders who will consider the wallop of different surfaces on equid injuries and deaths.

It will also see the feasibility of a nationwide acceptance of synthetic substance surfaces, also known as “all-weather” surfaces.

The move comes amid controversy over equine deaths at racetracks crossways America, including 12 at shoemaker's last year’s Kentucky Derby. The non-profit group, Horseracing Wrongs, estimates that to a greater extent than 2,000 racehorses perish from each one twelvemonth inward the US. That includes fatalities that occur off-track, during training or inwards the stalls.

Meanwhile, equid deaths on synthetical surfaces are around half of those on sward and a tertiary of those on grunge tracks, according to the Equine Injury Database. That’s for the most part because these surfaces earmark for consistently stable conditions for horse racing, even inwards big weather, eliminating the soggy or uneven tracks that tin do horses to stumble.

Synthetic is Safer

From 2009-2022, at that place were 534 equine deaths on synthetical surfaces from 482,169 starts, which equates to 1.11 per 1,000 starts. That’s compared with 6,036 fatalities on dirt from 3,242,505 starts (1.86 per 1,000) and 1,032 from 728,445 starts on grass (1.41 per 1,000).

Synthetic surfaces aren’t so pop with traditionalists, though, who savor the sound of hooves thundering on sod and stain quick inwards their wake.

And gamblers, who pridefulness themselves on analyzing the caterpillar tread conditions — and how a particular proposition Equus caballus performs under those circumstances – may kick the surfaces take away some of the sport of betting. Bettors also sound off the surfaces relieve oneself performances unpredictable.

In 2007, Calif. racing officials made synthetic substance surfaces mandatory at tracks, but later relented when the experiment proven a failure. Santa Anita, for example, spent millions converting its rails only if to happen the new stilted surface did non do adequately below uttermost(a) temperatures. It was also plagued past drainage issues.

Belmont Mungo Park Experiment

But the caliber of modern font synthetic tracks has improved since, as has knowledge most how to decently maintain them. Several tracks inward North America are at present either partly or fully synthetic, including Gulfstream Park inward Florida, Woodbine inward Canada, Turfway Park inward Ohio, Presque Isle Downs in Pennsylvania, and Golden Gate William Claude Dukenfield in California.

The NYRA is constructing a one-mile synthetic-surface running at Belmont Park, place of the Belmont Stakes, as division of a $455 jillion renovation, a potentiality watershed.

“When you have to the debate of synthetics, there’s a lot of info come out there, but it’s non really been brought unitedly comprehensively, not in this format,” NYRA chair and CEO David O’Rourke told the Associated Press.

“I opine really the main melodic theme here would be integrating of synthetics and where it makes sense, where it’s economically viable,” he added.

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