NEWS
Renovation delay forces Santa Anita to cancel Friday card
Posted: Thursday, February 07, 2008 2:03 PM
Unable to renovate its troubled Cushion Track surface in four days, Santa Anita Park has canceled Friday’s live racing card.
The track began the project on Sunday night and hoped to finish on Thursday. The return of live racing now is nscheduled for Saturday.
“We expected to make substantial progress starting late Sunday,” said Ian Pearse, the founder of Pro-Ride, which is installing a polymer and binder to the Cushion Track surface that has not drained properly. “We began amending the track, but the uneven drainage left it very wet in places and drier in others. The binder and polymer application is the most crucial piece of the renovation puzzle, and it cannot be done properly unless the surface is consistent, which delayed the initial application of the polymer until Monday.”
The track issues have now cost Santa Anita 11 live dates since the start of the year.
“We know and deeply regret that the lost days have inconvenienced many horsemen and fans,” Santa Anita President Ron Charles said. “At this point, as painful as it is to everyone to miss another day, an extra 24 hours is absolutely necessary to make sure that we allow Pro-Ride the time to complete this massive project according to their exact specifications. Our track crews have been working from 7:00 a.m. until after midnight every day, and will continue to do so until we get this finished.
“We will definitely race on Saturday,” said Charles. “Ian agrees, and is very confident that the process is going well now. The portions of track that have been completed so far are as good as we expected. We have become increasingly encouraged that this new surface is going to be what we had hoped—a good, consistent and kind surface that we all believe will drain properly for the rest of the meet.”
Friday’s nine race card will be redrawn for the meet’s first make-up date on February 13.
