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View Full Version : Santa Anita Surface(s)


rrbauer
12-01-2008, 10:47 AM
Santa Anita opens later this month and in yesterday's "Today's Racing Digest" Bruno De Julio gave a big push to Gayego (won, set new track record) and in his analysis pointed out that Gayego's four races over Santa Anita's synthetic were actually over four different surfaces. The most recent being over the new Pro-ride in October; the race in March over the mixture of Pro-ride and Cushion; the race in January over the polymer-depleted (by rain and maintenance) Cushion; and, the race in December over their original Cushion surface.

I imagine that some of the folks who pay close attention to variants (CJ and Dave Schwartz come to mind) for building pars might have something to add to this, but the idea is that when you look at Santa Anita races in the PP's, the simple "synthetic" designation can be misleading when comparing performances.