New Track Might Put a Bounce in Their Steps

It looks like dirt, but pick up a handful.

“Waxy,” trainer Doug O’Neill said.

Ron Sticka, another trainer, took a whiff of the air at Hollywood Park, where the new $8-million synthetic racing surface that has replaced the dirt track opened for training for the first time Wednesday morning.

“Rubber and oil,” he said. “I like it. It smells like a junkyard.”

There will be jokes for a while about racing on a surface made of wax-coated sand, chunks of rubber and fiber that feels like greasy hairballs, but the early reviews for a track many expect to reduce fatal injuries to horses and strengthen the weakened California racing industry were very positive.

“I love it,” said Denise Falk, an assistant trainer to Paul Aguirre who exercised horses Wednesday. “It’s like a shock absorber. The horses just bounce off of it, and it’s not so jarring for us. I might be using less Advil.”

Jack Van Berg, the Hall of Fame trainer who won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness with Alysheba in 1987, watched closely as the first horses took to the track, which is a lighter shade of brown than the old dirt, but still very much looks like dirt.

“I know I’ll like it,” he said, but like some others, he preferred to wait a day or so to let the surface “settle” before working horses on it.

O’Neill took a look when the track opened at 5:30 a.m. and then sent out one horse after another, including multiple stakes winners Whilly and Stevie Wonderboy. He also said his top horse, Lava Man, will train at Hollywood Park after initially saying he’d keep him at Santa Anita because of uncertainty about the new surface.

Though some expect slower times on the new track -- perhaps by as much as a second over six furlongs -- O’Neill said his early clockings suggested the times will be fairly equivalent.

“It will be great for the handicappers if there are similar times,” he said.

How the new surface affects racing will be the hot subject when the Hollywood Park fall meet opens Nov. 1 and the track becomes the first in the state to hold races on a synthetic surface, complying with a mandate by the California Horse Racing Board that the state’s five major thoroughbred tracks install synthetic surfaces by the end of 2007.

“Some people will like it, some won’t. That’s the nature of the world,” said Eual Wyatt, vice president and general manager of Hollywood Park.

“If it does what it’s supposed to do, reduce injuries, then it’s a success.”

Turfway Park in Florence, Ky., became the first North American racetrack to install a synthetic surface last year and reported that injuries resulting in horses being euthanized fell from 24 to three over the same period a year after the switch. Since then, Keeneland in Kentucky and Woodbine in Canada have installed such tracks. Plans are underway for installation of a synthetic track at Del Mar, where 18 horses died because of racing or training injuries during the recently concluded meet.

Besides reportedly enhancing the safety of horses by providing better footing, synthetic tracks recover from bad weather quickly. Because of an elaborate drainage system beneath the surface, the tracks should handle rain well and never have to be sealed.

More important at Hollywood Park, officials are hoping the new track -- a brand known as Cushion Track that is a competitor of the better-known Polytrack -- will be attractive to trainers and owners, and that field sizes will increase.

“It gives us a selling point,” said Martin Panza, vice president for racing at Hollywood Park. “We haven’t gotten the slots, and other states have. We’ve been behind the eight-ball in purse sizes. This is something we can control. It helps the industry.”

The new surface might already have paid what Panza called its “first dividend.”

Todd Pletcher, the leading trainer in North America the last two years, has told Panza he will send 35 to 50 horses to train at Hollywood Park, the first such foray for the New York-based trainer.

“He’s come in for stakes but never had a base here,” Panza said. “Those are quality horses. It’s got to help the product.”

Trainer Mike Mitchell noted that one owner already has told him he’d like to bring horses that had been based in the East to Hollywood Park.

“I walked on it,” he said, nodding toward the track. “Cushion is a good word. It’s kind of like a sponge. If you squeeze some in your hand, then open it up, it doesn’t stay balled up like clay. And the sound of it. It’s quiet. When the track is hard, you can hear the hooves hit the ground.

“You might have a reversal of form for a lot of horses. They might start getting sound again.

“I think it’s the best thing to happen to our industry.”

robyn.norwood@latimes.com