Leif Dickinson wants to correct anyone who believes a "new" turf course will be unveiled Dec. 1 at Gulfstream Park.
"It's not a new course," said Dickinson, the director of turf racing for Gulfstream's parent company, 1/ST Racing. "It's the same grass. The same distance."
Instead, Dickinson views the fruits of six months of work on the course as a "complete transformation."
"It's the same track but it will be managed differently and we've already seen a huge difference in it," he said.
To the naked eye of horsemen at the south Florida track, Gulfstream's turf course is surely a vast improvement from the worn-out oval they last used in late May before Dickinson and his team began their task of overhauling every facet of growing and maintaining it.
"We changed pretty much everything. How it's moved, how it's watered. Different mowers. The way we aerate it. We changed everything in regards to how the track is maintained. It's the same track. We just changed how we maintain it. Let's put it that way."
Unlike Churchill Downs and Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots which have struggled mightily with their turf courses in recent months, Gulfstream's "transformed" turf course looks great and is already earning praise from horsemen.
"We have grass. Thick, lush grass. It should be more resilient. We overseeded it to give it cover," said Dickinson, whose 35 years of experience in his field includes work at Santa Anita Park and Del Mar.
In advance of Thursday's return of turf racing, Florida-based trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. worked a pair of horses, Fawning and Midnight Bella, on it Nov. 28 and came away quite pleased.
"We worked two horses and they got over it very well. You couldn't really hear them, so the course has good cushion," Joseph said Monday. "It was a good piece of ground to work on. The course is in very good shape. Visually it looks good. To run over a course like this will be refreshing and enjoyable for the horses."
The works confirmed Joseph's initial thoughts about the course.
"It looks as good as any course in the country, if not the best in the country. It's in tremendous shape," Joseph said a day before the works. "It's had a lot of rest and that's the key for any course. It looks like on the inside they drained it properly. There's not a slope there anymore."
Mike Lakow, Gulfstream's vice president of racing operations, and the track's racing office have been understandably delighted about the ability to once again add turf racing to the 5-days-a-week cards at the Hallandale Beach track.
"The anticipation is extraordinary. It's a different course this year. It appears spectacular," said Lakow, whose track put out a youtube video to showcase the course. "Last year the course was safe. It wasn't pretty, but there was a root system. Now, walking the course, for me, it's incredibly exciting. I think the horsemen are going to be overwhelmed by how nice it is compared to the last few years. Corporate spared no expense. They let us do what we needed to do and I think it's going to pay a dividend."
The importance of turf during the winter months at Gulfstream was reflected in the upcoming four cards. Aside from three turf races among the nine races Thursday, there will be three Dec. 2, followed by six on the 10-race Dec. 3 program, and five from 10 races Dec. 4. In addition, included in those 38 races, 10 will be contested on Gulfstream's synthetic Tapeta course.
"We will have around four turf races a day and on big Saturdays maybe seven or eight with two rail settings," Lakow said.
That slate of 17 turf races in four days also reflects the major question mark facing turf racing at Gulfstream. Due to its heavy use, the course usually suffers from wear and tear during the course of a four-month winter championship meet and some trainers are reluctant to run in the turf stakes late in the meet. The course also figures to have larger fields early on with Fair Grounds canceling turf racing until late December, leaving Gulfstream and Tampa Bay Downs as the eastern options for turf racing.
"It's been a big concern in March and April if you should run your stakes horse in March and April at the end of the meet when the turf was really beaten up," trainer Christophe Clement said. "So if they can give us a better product, especially at the end of the meet, I'm sure we will be more willing to run more of the better horses. Anything that makes a racing surface better is a great thing."
Seven-time Eclipse Award winner and 18-time leading Gulfstream championship meet trainer Todd Pletcher also said he was eager to see how the course holds up during the winter.
"On television, it looks good. Hopefully it's as good as it looks. The proof will be in the racing," said Pletcher, who won the last two editions of Gulfstream's Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational Stakes (G1T) with Colonel Liam .
To combat that issue, Dickinson has revised how the course will be maintained and the equipment used throughout the meet and rest of 2023 at the year-round track.
"We're going to do the best we can with the track. We're going to maintain it every day," Dickinson said. "We're going to work on it every day. We're going to do everything we can to make sure this track is successful moving forward. That's the long and short of it."
Dickinson said the rail placings have been changed to seven-foot intervals and that will play a key role in preventing excessive wear on one part of the track.
"Rails will be integral to what we are doing. There will be multiple rail moves. There will be more rail moves but shorter ones. The rail will be moved twice a week with a bigger setting for Wednesdays through Fridays, like 63 feet, and a shorter one for Saturdays and Sundays, perhaps zero or seven," he said. "You want to use the whole track. You can't do anything for horses who go 50-feet wide. But if you can protect the seven-eighths turn and the three-eighths turn, that will go a long way toward determining how much we can race on this course and how it will hold up before we have to shut it down. All turf courses need to be shut down at some point and re-grown."
Also helping is the Tapeta course. Since turf horses, in general, handle the all-weather surface, it allows the racing office to cancel turf racing due to wet conditions without a rash of scratches and a disruption of racing schedules for trainers and owners.
"What we have going for us in the Tapeta. We're not going to push it if we're unsure about the condition of the turf course," Lakow said. "At least we have something for the owners who are paying the bills. They don't have to regroup if their horse is ready to go and wait another three weeks for the next race. When he had no turf since June, the horsemen really stepped up. They understand the situation and they have supported the Tapeta quite well. It's a superior course. It's a very forgiving course. We've run reports and favorites win more often on Tapeta than dirt or turf."
Joseph said about 70% of his turf horses handle Tapeta and has welcomed the additional course that sliced about 60 feet of width from the turf course.
"I found 70% of my horses transferred their turf form to the Tapeta," said Joseph, the leading trainer at the track's 2021-22 championship meet. "That makes it manageable. I don't mind the Tapeta because every day, I know it will be a consistent surface. You don't have to worry about slop or losing a grass race. You know what you're going to get."
Of course, for all of Dickinson's meticulous planning and work, the X factor that cannot be altered is Mother Nature, who, in south Florida, creates headaches for trackmen with a constant array of brief but sometimes powerful rain storms.
"Rain is something I'm coming to grips with," Dickinson said. "It doesn't rain in southern California. It rains all the time in Florida. You could mail in the moisture content every day at Del Mar. It never changed. But in Florida, you get rain every 20 minutes. One side of the track can be wet and the other dry. It's a new experience for me."
Guess there is indeed something "new" about Gulfstream Park's turf course after all.
