At the track, finding blame is the easy part

In retrospect, his might have been the brightest assessment of all.

Shapiro has tried to weather this storm, so to speak, with patience, poise and even humor.

"As we all know by now," he wrote recently, "the manufacturer of Cushion Track changed the formula, and the sand mixture used at Santa Anita, rather than promoting drainage, actually prevents it. This particular all-weather track should have come with an asterisk: *except rain."

Yes, some of the bad luck was weather. It rained a lot. That happens, even in Southern California.

And yes, there was some bad judgment involved in the selection of the vendor who provided the surface. Right now, the attempted repairs are being done by the vendor who finished second in the bidding. Apparently, he wasn't good enough to build it, but he is to repair it.

Oops.

Ron Charles, the respected president of Santa Anita, has been under fire for more than vendor selection -- such as for his three-days-race, four-days-fix rotation. Wasn't it obvious there was a problem long before Dec. 26? Would it not have been better to tear up the track after the Oak Tree meeting in November and take as long as needed to fix it correctly, rather than keeping fingers crossed and praying for dry weather?

That, of course, is easy hindsight.

Also easy are the many verbal brickbats being hurled at Shapiro, who, with horses going down, responded to an apparent need by doing something, rather than nothing.

"I truly don't care if we run in dirt or on synthetic," he says, "I just want what is the safest and best."

The actual numbers documenting the success of synthetic tracks are elusive, and controversial.

Rick Arthur, equine medical director for the CHRB, sends along numbers that show marked declines in racing and training deaths at all California tracks since they have gone synthetic. Arthur's numbers say that, during the 2004 and '05 seasons (before synthetics), the fatality rate was "1 in 445 starts on all surfaces combined at the majors (Bay Meadows, Golden Gate Fields, Hollywood Park, Santa Anita, Oak Tree Racing Assn. at Santa Anita and Del Mar). In '07, the rate was 1 in 913 starts on synthetic surfaces."

But Len Shulman, a writer for the Blood-Horse magazine and a frequent guest on Roger Stein's racing radio show, used different numbers on a recent broadcast, numbers he said came from the CHRB's own website and, if accurate, would make synthetic tracks the biggest folly since the Edsel.