Oaklawn patching damages

Training, racing returns to track

An outrider looks at the condition of the track at Oaklawn Park on Saturday in Hot Springs. Live racing was canceled Saturday and Sunday due to rainy conditions.
An outrider looks at the condition of the track at Oaklawn Park on Saturday in Hot Springs. Live racing was canceled Saturday and Sunday due to rainy conditions.

— Oaklawn Park plans to open the track for training at 10 a.m. today, said David Longinotti, Oaklawn’s assistant general manager/racing.

Training was canceled Sunday and Monday after several areas of the racing surface, notably a section early on the first turn, washed out following rain early Saturday afternoon.

Torrential rain began falling approximately an hour before racing was scheduled to begin and forced Oaklawn to cancel live racing Saturday and Sunday to repair the surface.

Racing is scheduled to resume, as scheduled, at 1:30 p.m. Thursday.

Oaklawn General Manager Eric Jackson said track officials had hoped to get horses on the track late Monday afternoon, but a frozen surface compounded problems created by the washouts.

“We need the surface to dry out some to get the graders on it,” Jackson said late Monday morning. “We’ve got the cushion back, although we’re going to have to add a little more. We really just need to grade it. The cushion’s not evenly distributed right now.”

Jackson said “8 to 10” areas of the surface washed out Saturday, with by far the most extensive damage just past the 7 1/2-furlong pole, situated a sixteenth of a mile from the starting gate for route races.

Longinotti estimated that washout in the middle of the track was 6 inches deep, 2 1/2 to 3 feet in width, at its widest point, and 15 feet long.

It was filled Saturday with premixed sand, silt and clay - the same material as the surface - but Longinotti said Oaklawn wanted to make sure the area had settled and was compacted before training resumed.

Jackson said new track Superintendent Kevin Seymore said he believed the washout near the 7 1/2-furlong pole wasn’t as bad as it initially appeared.

Banking of the turn exaggerated runoff of water toward the infield, Jackson said, and “6 to 8 inches” of track cushion had to be pulled back Sunday by maintenance crews.

“A lot of cushion is still under the rail,” Jackson said. “We’re going to be working on that for a while. I think when it dries, we’re going to find out most of it [cushion] is still there. I think Kevin’s right. I think it looks worse than it is.”

Jackson, a Hot Springs native and Oaklawn’s general manager since 1987, said he’s still never seen as much standing water in the infield as there was Saturday.

Jackson said he believes saturated ground from a Christmas Day snowstorm that dumped about a foot of snow in Hot Springs and rain on the eve of Friday’s opener led to the surface washouts.

Jackson said Oaklawn experienced a much more severe washout on the first turn approximately 25 years ago, but it occurred on a day when the track wasn’t racing.

A rain-related cancellation of a card is apparently unprecedented in Oaklawn history.

“It’s just unfortunate,” Jackson said. “I told somebody if we were a professional baseball team, this would happen all the time. They call games for rain, but this was a first for us.”

Sports, Pages 15 on 01/15/2013

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