I’m up here in Saratoga. I came up for what started out as a great week for me with the Hall of Fame. I was the keynote speaker and it was a great honor. I was scheduled to ride in a race at Arlington on Friday (for the Dining with the Dynasties weekend) and I figured I would get on a few horses to get in shape. I got up Sunday morning and headed out to the track to work 2 for Todd Pletcher in company with Angel Cordero. I worked the first horse with no issues and was hanging out getting ready for the second horse. I was working a horse around 8:30 in company with Angel. While I was coming down the stretch the horse had a heart attack and I came off and broke my left collarbone. Unfortunately, the horse did not survive. Needless to say, my great week turned out not so great.
I have my left arm in a sling, kinda sucks even more because I’m a lefty. They say it will be around 6-8 weeks for it to be fully healed. I don’t plan on getting on ANY horses for a long, long, long, long, long , long time…… if ever….

This winter has been a rough one for racing around the country, not just at the Great Race Place Santa Anita, but there have been cancellations in every section of the United States. My question is, is it due to Mother Nature or the racing surfaces?

When Oaklawn Park was forced to cancel I did not hear one comment that it was because Oaklawn has a poor surface. As the debate continues over synthetic tracks versus conventional dirt I may as well put in my two cents worth. There are good and bad in everything and tracks are not excluded. It is my feeling that with the amount of rainfall Santa Anita has been hit with in the first two months of 2010, that there is not a surface in the world that could have handled it as quickly as it hit. If the track was still conventional we would have had a sealed surface that would have had washouts and been uneven in places. Does no one remember the injuries that were sustained on sealed race tracks? I sure do. I got to the point where I refused to ride on them because of what the concussion through the horse, transferred to me, did to my knees.

These tracks, I believe, were directly responsible for cutting my career short. These quick fixes just so racing could continue, also in my opinion, contributed to shortening or ending many equine athletes over the years. We need to ask ourselves the question, is it the surface, or the drainage of the track, or Mother Nature, or a combination that has led to five cancellations in the first two months of the year.

To me this is Mother Nature’s way of saying “Be patient.” Every horse that didn’t race was able to walk out of their stall the next morning. Could we say that if Santa Anita was still a conventional dirt surface? I don’t think so. Before we decide to go back to conventional I think all should consider the repercussions that will follow. Many owners from around the country have brought horses to California to compete in top class racing on both turf and synthetic over the past two seasons. California’s horse population is down. It will go down again if we return to dirt. We should find a surface or system that will handle the rainfall but also be safe. I don’t feel that the paved roads created by sealing a racetrack are the answer.

The old line “never mess with Mother Nature” comes to mind. A lot of you will say that Mother Nature never created synthetic racetracks. True, but she gave us the ability to.