All-Weather Tracks Can Make Sense for Safety, Business

According to at least two experts, some of the common criticisms of all-weather racing do not hold up to statistical analysis.

At last month's Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit, McKinsey and Company partners Dan Singer and Ben Vonwiller recommended transforming additional tracks to all-weather surfaces as one of several paths toward improved safety in North American races. Before a horseman could utter "soft-tissue injury," or a horseplayer could say, "not for me," the two experts said some reasons for opposition of such surfaces do not hold water.

Singer and Vonwiller said attacking the equine safety issue on several fronts can pay dividends. Some of their other recommendations included moving every United States track to top-level post-entry screening, further use (and study) of wearable technologies to monitor horse health, further protections for horses in claiming races, an improved approach to surface management, and adding transparency on the safety performance of trainers as well as breeders.

Also among those recommendations was the call for an increased use of all-weather surfaces. It's important to note that they didn't suggest all dirt tracks be converted. Instead, the McKinsey Report found the best candidates for this change would be dirt surfaces that race in hot and cold temperatures and are heavily used in terms of racing and training. McKinsey said converting six dirt tracks that land in these categories to all-weather would result in an 8-12% reduction in the overall fatality rate.

After making that recommendation, Singer and Vonwiller shifted into "myth-busters" mode, offering three economic-impact arguments they've heard against all-weather surfaces that they believe do not hold up to statistical scrutiny. McKinsey talked with people throughout the industry and said these concerns were raised by track officials and respected trainers.

"In our research on all-weather, we had some very strong pushback from experienced trainers and some from tracks," said Singer, noting that these positions typically were based on three beliefs tied to negative economic impact. "So we did our very best to analyze these three things. And in each case, we think they're unproven or possibly incorrect."

Myth 1

Converting to all-weather would markedly decrease the average field size and number of horses running at our track.

In fact, the McKinsey team found quite the opposite. Average field sizes on all-weather surfaces were not smaller than those on dirt when a study compared North American tracks that had operated both dirt and all-weather tracks during 2009-22. Additionally, McKinsey found that 75% of the racetracks that operated both track surfaces in 2009-22 saw a statistically significant increase in field size on all-weather when compared with dirt, regardless of dirt track condition.

Myth 2

Since handicappers have less information about a horse's performance on all-weather than on dirt, switching to all-weather could decrease the number of bets, handle, and takeout.

McKinsey found that average win/place/show handle was not significantly different per race on all-weather surfaces vs. dirt surfaces, which compared tracks that had operated both, including one track that offered Breeders' Cup races over both surface types. Additionally, tracks that operated both all-weather and dirt surfaces in 2009-22 recovered between 10% and 20% more win/place/show handle pre-race when a race was moved off turf to an all-weather surface when compared to such a race moved to dirt. The win/place/show handle was the available metric for study.

Myth 3

Horses who run on all-weather are more likely to sustain a variety of overuse injuries and thus running on all-weather can decrease the lifespan of my horse.

McKinsey actually found no statistically significant difference in career length, both in terms of years and number of races, between horses that ran more on synthetic compared with those who ran more on dirt. The study looked at the racing careers of some 26,000 horses.