There's a comment somewhere else on here about it looking in bad condition - I think it was Gamla who mentioned it. Looking at it closely today because of what he'd said, I'd agree - although that's only from a camera's view. There were bald patches near to the rails, especially in the run to the line, and the colouring of the grass was very uneven, suggesting a variable growth rate in the grass. The yellowish grass might've been the result of past divoting where the mended bits haven't yet grown over sufficiently, and perhaps Chris (Stickels) isn't finding it so easy to manage since the luscious old turf was ripped up, thanks to Skinny-Bum's mismanagement of the renovations. Remember how you couldn't actually see the racing after the, er, improvements? All that turf down the straight got hoiked up and the ground under it was literally raised with thousands of tons of fresh earth, then new turf laid down. It's very possible that the turf wasn't as good a species as the old, or that it's just taking a long time to bed in deep and grow uniformly well. I'm sure he had a nightmare on his hands for the first season.
As for horses going wrong on it, again it could go to the fact that the whole underlying soil structure is still itself bedding-in. You can roll all you like, but it takes seasons of rain, snow, drying, and repeats of that before soil stops shifting. It's not noticeable with new lawns, as they don't have dozens of 1500lbs worth of speeding horses charging across them. But Chris has got not just the grass to see grow well, but to be concerned that the soil underbase is still far from settled in.
Only my theory, Martin!
