How come all American classic races aren’t run on grass? The horses come in so much cleaner than when they’re running on dirt/in mud!
That earlier winner came in so filthy, the jockey’s mouth looked like a kid eating chocolate, they must have had to scrub them both down before taking them to the winner’s circle.
So why not run all our races on grass? They get rain in England, too, and they run on grass over there.
Mostly because we have a whole different system of racing. England has very short meets and no training at the racecourse. America has very long meets and everyone trains at the track. A turf course can’t hold up to 8 daily races for 3-4 months and so the majority of races are on dirt, which in turn makes our most prestigious races on dirt. Also England stops racing in the winter and America does not so they don’t have to deal with frozen ground. Just a totally different set of circumstances over here.
Racing on a turf course in the rain is no fun either. It can get slick or extremely heavy and tiring. A sloppy track is actually quite a fast, easy track for a horse to get over.
Also England stops racing in the winter
Good points by keepthelegend but a small correction: The UK and Ireland switch from flat to jump racing in the winter but still on turf. Many racecourses are dual purpose and so are holding meetings all year round. Several tracks use protective covers if frost is predicted so racing can still take place, which is fairly recent development. But a temperate climate means grass can grow for most of the year. The British Isles are blessed with great grass.
And horses evolved to run on grass so they cope with rain.
Plus more flat-out cancellations–US turf races get taken off if it’s too wet as it rips up the sod.
[QUOTE=Willesdon;8343329]
Good points by keepthelegend but a small correction: The UK and Ireland switch from flat to jump racing in the winter but still on turf. Many racecourses are dual purpose and so are holding meetings all year round. Several tracks use protective covers if frost is predicted so racing can still take place, which is fairly recent development. But a temperate climate means grass can grow for most of the year. The British Isles are blessed with great grass.
And horses evolved to run on grass so they cope with rain.[/QUOTE]
Yes, that was dumb of me to say as I spend every other New Years Day at Cheltenham! I was thinking flat racing, but really the main issue is so many states that race in the winter are in very cold climates where it would be very hard to race on turf.
As pointed out above the set up is completely different.
UK, Ireland and France have more racecourses, proportionally by geographical size, than the US.
For example, Kentucky and Ireland are about the same size, they have similar sized populations. Both are famously TB racing and breeding strongholds. Both have the same amount of racing days per year.
Kentucky has 5 race tracks.
Ireland has 26 (and that’s not counting Point to Point courses).
With the exception of Kentucky Downs (which is ironically very much in the UK/Ireland mold as a racecourse… few dates, none or little on course training), horses are stabled at train daily at the KY racetracks. Each track races for 4-5 days a week for months on end, and horses work on the track every morning 7 days a week.
In Ireland each racecourse holds only a day or two of racing, then sits idle for weeks or months before racing again. The longest meet in Ireland is the Galway summer meet in August, which is 5 consecutive days of racing, and the course is often pretty beat up come Saturday. The horses are all trained at home on farms or on public gallops at the Curragh. They only go to the track to race, not train (there are occasional exceptions to this, when horses, usually high profile horses, will get permission to work on the course after the last race, or between races).
Races are only cancelled in Europe if the conditions are considered dangerous, and that usually involves snow or frozen ground in the winter. The will race on soft or heavy ground if need be. In the US by contrast, turf races will be put on the maintrack if their is even a small amount of rain, to prevent the turf course for getting cut up. Exceptions are generally made for G1 races, but even those can sometimes get pulled off the turf and onto the main course (the Shadwell Mile at Keeneland in 2013), though they often get downgraded to a G2 or G3 when that happens.
Dirt, being dirt, can’t really get damaged in the same way by rain. You just let it dry out and drag it and you are back to normal the next day, or even later the same day with enough sun and wind.
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