Officials optimistic about fixing track

This was supposed to be the year of the jockey, according to a Santa Anita marketing campaign, but so far it has mainly been the year of the synthetic track.

As racing resumed Thursday at Santa Anita, the saga took another turn, with the Arcadia racetrack at least temporarily abandoning plans to replace the troubled synthetic track with a traditional dirt surface.

Suddenly, there is optimism about saving the synthetic Cushion Track that has been plagued with a drainage problem and caused three straight racing days to be canceled last Saturday through Monday.

Santa Anita President Ron Charles had planned to announce details involving the installation of a sandy loam dirt surface Thursday. Instead, it was announced that there would be no announcement.

That’s because Charles and other Santa Anita officials were for the first time encouraged that the synthetic Cushion Track’s drainage problem can be fixed.

The optimism came after the arrival Thursday from Australia of synthetic track expert Ian Pierce of Pro-Ride Racing, a company that Santa Anita had initially considered hiring to install its synthetic track. Pierce’s plane set down at 7:30 a.m. and he immediately went to work in a lab at USC with professor Jean-Pierre Bardet, the chairman of the school’s civil and environmental engineering department.

Just before sunset, Pierce, Royce Hanamaikai, Pro-Ride’s Los Angeles-based representative, Richard Tedasco, Santa Anita’s track superintendent, and Charles walked out on the Cushion Track for an impromptu meeting.

Pierce said he hoped a solution to the drainage problem can be found through testing at USC.

The culprit is a silt, or very fine sand, that was included in the Cushion Track mixture that lies atop an asphalt base.

“We hope to find a way to bind that sand together and separate it from the other ingredients so that the track will drain properly,” Pierce said.

He added that he would have a better idea today just how long the testing will take and when a final decision on what to do can be made.

“We know that the industry wants answers,” Charles said. “Believe me, we do too. But we have to be sure we take the time necessary to make the right decision on this.

“The minute we know we’ve got a solid plan for the rest of the meet, we will announce it.”

One announcement Charles did make was that there will be racing Monday as originally scheduled. The reason for that announcement was that he had expected to cancel Monday’s card in order to begin installing the dirt surface.

Monday is three days before the California Horse Racing Board is scheduled to vote on a waiver that would clear the way for Santa Anita to temporarily go back to a dirt track, but Charles has been assured it will get such a waiver if it’s needed.

The waiver is required because the racing board mandated in 2006 that California’s five major racetracks have synthetic surfaces by the end of 2007.

Charles said estimates are that the removal of the synthetic surface and putting down a new sandy loam dirt track would take eight to 10 days.

The plan was that if the project began Monday, there would be racing only Jan. 19, 20 and 21 on the turf course. The hope was that the new dirt track would be in place in time to resume racing on the regular Thursday-through-Monday schedule Jan. 24.

Some trainers complained Thursday that the Cushion Track was a little hard.

“It was fine before the rain,” trainer Gary Sherlock said.

But jockey Joe Talamo, who rode three winners Thursday in front of a crowd of 3,884 -- his first wins of the meet -- wasn’t complaining. He said the track was in good shape.

But when told by a reporter that plans to replace the synthetic surface had been shelved, he said, “I think it would be better if they replaced it. This is my first winter in California, but I know this is the rainy season and I’d hate to see us lose any more racing days.”

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larry.stewart@latimes.com