I hate being right all the time. But I hate even more being right earlier in the year and having those words come back to haunt me. So while the undying optimist in me heralded Curlin’s second victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic before the race was run, the hard-boiled realist in me said, “I told you so!” after Curlin finished with the worst placing of his career. I told me so. And I ignored me.
What’s worse is that ESPN’s handicappers seem to have forgotten their roundtable discussion about the state of horse racing earlier this year. In that discussion, synthetic surfaces were touted as a possible factor that could keep our horses safer, but the jury was still out. They referenced seasoned trainers like Nick Zito who hated the surface and determined synthetics were not the only answer to improving the quality of our sport. Now, after a two-day live telecast where no horse broke down, Santa Anita’s new surface has become the best thing since sliced bread. Tuning into the Breeders’ Cup coverage was like watching a paid advertisement for Pro-Ride. Why is this bad? You could say horse racing’s voices are clamoring to gain positive press, and the synthetic surface issue is the ticket to getting into the good graces of the public eye, dismissing the problems that it is causing our champion athletes.
My case stands as follows: no single horse won a race over the two-day event that had never started over a synthetic surface before, unless that horse was a turf horse. The turf horses and synthetic horses had all the advantage over both the grass and the main track, where the so-called “Dirt Mile” was run over a rubbery, fast ground. Is this what “leveling the playing field” means, to take away the chances of any horse that runs on the classic dirt surface?
The media was hyping the Euro invasion, and rightly so, because this was the first time in the Breeders’ Cup’s 25-year history that the main track would not be made up of good old-fashioned dirt, which is the specialty for American horses and the opposite for Euro horses. The Breeders’ Cup was tailor-made for the Euros this year, no questions about it. Will there be even more Euro entries next year? Of course, since the championships will be run at Santa Anita again. But come 2010, when the BC goes to Churchill Downs, where do you think the Euros will go? Back to the grass, or staying at home.
To further drive home my point, look into Curlin’s nightmarish upset. The 2007 Horse of the Year was unbeatable this year on dirt, his only loss this season coming from his first start on turf until the Breeders’ Cup. He had never run on synthetics before. In his entire career, he’d never finished worse than third. Come Breeders’ Cup, he was able to kick into a powerful drive coming into the final stretch. But then, something happened—after his sweeping move around the turn, he appeared to be spinning his wheels. Suddenly, he was taken down by a tidal wave of horses in the middle of the stretch. The turf horses were making their move.
Curlin finished fourth behind Raven’s Pass, Henrythenavigator, and Tiago. After the race, Curlin’s trainer, Steve Asmussen said, “It was a turf race. It was absolutely the Pro-Ride surface [that beat him].” The winning trainer of Raven’s Pass, John Gosden, said, “The thing about Curlin is that he has a phenomenally high cruising speed… On that [synthetic] surface, he’s vulnerable…” ESPN handicapper Randy Moss said after the race, “There’s no way Tiago was gonna outrun this horse (Curlin) on dirt… If this race was run on conventional dirt at Belmont Park, at Churchill Downs, Curlin probably wins this race and takes back-to-back Classics.” And after that, Moss goes on to say, “The great thing about the synthetic surfaces is [that they] keep horses safer, and we saw that today, all day, all weekend long.” Oh, Randy, you were doing so well!
These surfaces keep horses safer, do they? Tell that to the four horses who had fatal breakdowns within the first two weeks the Pro-Ride was open for training at Oak Tree. We were lucky during the Breeders’ Cup Championships that there were no injuries to our horses, and that’s all. Is accommodating horses from other parts of the world a good trade-off for paling the reputations of our American champions?
The Breeders’ Cup is a “world championship,” and that means all the world should be represented, including America’s specialty, the dirt surface, which is definitely not the same as the fake stuff.