Playing To Win

SURFACES

DIRT

Dirt racing makes up the majority of the races held in the United States, somewhere in the neighborhood of 85% of the total races held annually. If you were to ask a group of trainers what makes the best dirt course, you're likely to get all kinds of answers - mostly depending on what type of horses they have. Speed-crazy front runners tend to need a surface they can get over without sinking to deeply into it; one that has less cushion, or give. Closers, on the other hand, can usually handle a deeper course.

Generally, a track is made up of four layers: the racing surface, or cushion; the base, the sub-base, or drainage layer, and the native soil. The depth of the top three layers is usually around 24 inches.

Within the cushion, there are normally a mix of sand, clay, silt, and organic materials. The cushion runs from three to six inches in depth. Check out the chart below to see how a few tracks mix the percentages of these ingredients differently.

Track	Sand	Clay	Silt	Organic
Del Mar	86	9	3	2
Laurel	85	0	10	5
Arlington	60	18	22	0
Churchill Downs	75	2	23	0

As you can see, sand is the primary ingredient, to varying degrees. Track superintendents are constantly tweaking their racetrack to keep the mix consistent and safe for the horses. Continual changes in the weather, particularly any form of precipitation, can wreak havoc without careful attention.

Let's look at a scenario of how knowing track composition might give us a handicapping edge. Suppose a horse runs well over the Laurel surface with its 85% sand. If the same horse ships to Arlington, it might not take to their track that has a lot greater amount of silt and clay than Laurel's, but take the horse to Del Mar, and it could well like the sandier loam of the seaside track.

Below the cushion lies the limestone base and then a substrate for drainage. Limestone, present in much of the ground in Kentucky, has long been known to have many benefits for horses' health, and coincidentally drains very well - a big help when the track needs drying out. These two layers usually measure about 18 inches in depth, combined.

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• -Life Cycle

303-Track Conditions

• Intro
• Dirt
• Turf
• Distances
• Track Conditions