Santa Anita

[bob60566]

Dec-26 approaches with new dirt track,How will it play what angles first month beside speed.
What trainers will benifit with change super or all ?
Should we use stats prior to synthetic? or just start all over again.
Mac:)

[BlueShoe]

We really do not quite know how the track will play or what runners will run well on it. Many of the horses will have never run on a dirt track during their careers. This player intends to proceed with caution during the first weeks of the new meeting when wagering on dirt races, and reserve the more serious plays for the turf races.

[so.cal.fan]

I agree with Blue Shoe.

So far, this track looks super. It's going to be fast, and hopefully most of the better horses will like it just fine.
I plan to disregard any previous form from Del Mar.
I'll let you all know if I change my mind.

Like Blue Shoe, I'll be looking at the turf course for serious bets, at least for a few weeks.

Should be an interesting meet, that's the good news.
Bad news is the damn higher takeout..... :(

So. Cal. Fan will be betting in the win pool, but I really feel badly about the high takeout on the exotics. Not a good thing for any of us in the long run.

[26mulvilled]

I happen to be in Arcadia for work this weekend, so I wandered over to clockers corner this morning to watch the workouts. When I arrived, I found the main track closed due to the rain. There were some horses working on the inner training track, however.

The most interesting thing was listening to the trainers, most notably Barry Abrams. He was contending that Santa Anita never should have gone back to dirt, and that this was the view of a wide majority of trainers. He also said that Santa Anita was only closed by rain in the 3 years with a synthetic track, and that he expected Santa Anita to lose more days than that in this coming meet alone.

I don't have any information or more specifics, I am just reporting what I listened to this morning.

But maybe it will create some interesting discussion.

My own question is: I thought the major point of the new track was to fix it so there were no drainage problems- what happened? :confused:

[so.cal.fan]

Barry Abrahms has interest in many horses by the sire Unusual Heat.
I think Unusual Heat is one of the leading sires, if not the leading sire of synthetic track winners.
The sythetic track at Santa Anita cost many lost days due to poor drainage.
Let's see how this new one holds up.
They are obviously going to watch it very closely.

[BlueShoe]

We have an interesting (?) situation brewing. It has been raining in SoCal since Friday, and the forecast is for rains to continue, heavy at times, until Wednesday. Long range forecast is for clouds to return Christmas Day and a chance of showers on the 26th, opening day. What all this means is that the new track will be tested for drainage or other problems in the next few days. This series of storms is quite severe by SoCal standards, with flood alerts issued in some areas. If the new track holds up okay, it should mean that things will be fine all meeting as far as weather threats are concerned. If there are problems then--??.