International trends: The future is now

Much has been written and spoken of the introduction of Polytrack around the world. Polytrack is a synthetic riding surface made of a mixture of sand, synthetic fibers and recycled rubber coated with a “microcrystalline wax”polymers. The surface has  a high shock absorption rate, and a low elasticity repulsion rate (i.e limited kick back). The surface has been adopted as a replacement for traditional dirt tracks and trials suggest that it is both a faster and safer surface.

A number of race tracks and training establishments in The United States, Canada, France, England, Australia and Dubai have introduced polytrack surfaces in recent years with discussions well underway in South Africa as well.

New surfaces do of course lend themselves to interesting dinner party debate about the effect of polytrack on the future breeding of horses ie. will a turf or dirt pedigree adopt better, and what impact will this play on conformation, stallion rosters and mare bands, but leaving all that aside for the moment I thought I would highlight a rather interesting piece of news from America this morning: Keeneland’s 2007 April Two-Year-Olds in Training Sale will be the first juvenile auction in North America to use a Polytrack surface for its under tack shows. The sale will be held on Tuesday, 17th April. 226 horses have been cataloged for the one-day sale.