Backstretch reopens Aug. 8; training on new racing surface begins Aug. 10

Training on the new dirt track installed at Laurel Park in Maryland will begin on Aug. 10, track officials said during a conference call on Wednesday with horsemen, two days after trainers and their horses are let back on the grounds.

Officials on the call said that the renovation of the track is “nearing completion,” accounting for a slight push-back in their plans to open the track for training as early as Aug. 6. The renovation was hastily announced in April when the track’s parent company, 1/ST, decided to renovate the main racing surface, requiring the displacement of horses on the backstretch and a shift in racing dates to Laurel’s sister track, Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore.

Steve Koch, the company’s senior vice president of racing, said on the conference call that workers are currently readying the track for the placement of its final layers of cushion, the highest part of the racing surface. The cushion will be mixed and graded in the four days preceding the opening of training on Aug. 10, Koch said.

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“The cushion will be all new,” Koch said. “Actually, the whole track is all new.”

The renovation project was initially expected to take two months, but the project ran into unexpected problems, officials for 1/ST have said. The project entailed replacing the surface’s drainage system, its sub-surface, and its cushion.

Mick Peterson, a racing-surface expert who was hired by 1/ST to consult on the project, said that the new cushion is consistent with other mixtures used in the mid-Atlantic. He also said that the track will now have a single supplier for material that is added to the track in the future. Officials had said earlier that using different suppliers had led to inconsistencies in the mixture.