NYRA’s Tapeta track and comments by Moquett and Tinky spur Byk conversation

Raise a Native and Northern Dancer are mentioned

By Sid Fernando

I had an interesting chat with Steve Byk on his “At the Races” radio show on Wednesday about a number of issues related to breeding and racing. The conversation was spurred on by NYRA’s decision to hold a 90-day winter meet at Belmont on Tapeta and the subsequent responses to this on X (formerly Twitter) by Ron Moquett and Tony Cobitz, who writes under the name “Tinky.”

Moquett said in part: “My stance is we are not addressing the real problem when you change to synthetic surfaces. As long as we continue to place the most emphasis on breeding speed instead of stamina and soundness we will have trouble keeping horses sound. The only thing changing to synthetic accomplishes longterm is to confuse the breeder, buyer and player while breeding soft horses for nerf tracks.”

Tinky responded in part this way: “Circling back to Ron’s point that breeding unsound stock is a primary contributor to the problem, and that reversing the long-standing trend would ultimately be much more important than choosing safer track surfaces, I agree. But the solution isn’t binary, and even if breeders, owners, and trainers who have helped to facilitate the damaging breeding to sell paradigm, were to reverse course today, and begin to re-emphasize durability, it would take quite some time for the effects to be seen.”

My conversation with Steve begins here at the 1:08 mark. I made a few errors and apologize in advance: 1. Tapit is by Pulpit and not A.P. Indy; and 2. Speightstown is from a Storm Cat mare and not a Secretariat mare, of course.