Damn the rainy season's over and I didn;t get even a
quarter of our yard debris burned.
Happened across some articles from Barbaro's
breakdown...how they said the sport couldn't be or simply
would not change for isolated events such as that one. It
took Eight Belles bittersweet drama to unfold before a
stunned nation's eyes to finally wake up the people who hold
the power to make things better. Synthetics are still new
and "unproven" (though I shall point out that I am a
believer in their superior safety potential---when properly
constructed and maintained, as Santa Anita found out quite
the hard way last winter) Now more than ever racing needs
to embrace the concept of nationwide continuity/consistency
of racing rules and bylaws concerning such issues as
pre-race medications, equipment safety

( i.e. I am sold on solid arguments as of late regarding the
drawbacks and dangers of toe grabs - of course tampering
with a horse's stride break-over point is going to be....not
good to say the least. I'd be curious to get ahold of some
injury statistics from, say, 45 years ago and compare the
frequency of sesamoid fractures back then to the alarming
prevelance of such injuries today)


Sorry that would constitute a tangent, wouldn't it. I blame
Stephen King for that, as well as for my occasional forays
into stream-of-consciousness writing


so ...consistency of racing rules and bylaws concerning
such issues as pre-race medications, equipment safety, and
regulating all these new racing surfaces somehow. Between
Pro-Ride, Ride-On, Cushion Track, etc. we may wind up in a
situation where a dozen major tracks elect to contract their
dirt-to-synthetic conversions to different companies, and it'll
be apples to oranges to grapes to ears of damn corn to try
to figure horses' surface preferences. With such major
tracks as Keenland, Oaktree at Santa Anita, and Turfway park
joining this fight for racehorse safety we need to keep an
eye on retaining an opportunity to compare apples to apples,
for it is a luxury we're on the brink of losing and I fear
we won't miss it 'till it's irretrievably gone.