Racehorses get better footing through science

The professor has done research in the stratosphere. Sonic boom.

Now he's devoting himself to subterranean concerns at the racetrack. Sonic groom.

Enough with aerospace for the prof. He's conducting groundbreaking experiments without breaking any ground. Specifically, he's using an innovative contraption he's adapted to shoot radar beneath thoroughbred racing surfaces. This amalgam of ``Star Wars" and ``Seabiscuit" is designed to gauge the consistency of the track's composition. The mission is to provide a level playing field for the horses, and to protect them from injuries caused by missteps on the Sloppy Joes sometimes disguised as turf. If peaks and valleys are detected underground, the shovels come out and the grooming is modified accordingly. Given an even cushion, the horses theoretically have a better shot to win, and a much better shot to survive.

Michael -- you can call him Mick; everybody does -- Peterson of the University of Maine mechanical engineering faculty likens his device to the apparatus the phone company uses to locate utilities and clog roads. ``It's a series of antennae a few inches off the ground to determine whether the base is flat and the cushion is consistent," he says.

Translated, this means bettors at Del Mar outside San Diego, Peterson's latest laboratory, can thank the good professor when they step to the windows today. And curse him. They're always grateful for an enhanced chance once they put their money down. But Peterson's breakthrough removes a coveted alibi from their arsenal, and let's face it, railbird investors take to excuses like horses to oats. It could be the incompetent trainer, the sloppy jockey, the wind currents over the Indian Ocean . . . anything except ham-handed handicapping. Now they can't blame a lousy track.

But Peterson could be vindicated if his grand plan is adopted. He'd like to see ``quantitative information on the track's composition" included among the hieroglyphics horseplayers try to decipher before they part with two bucks.

The only wager Steve Wood cares about is whether his horses will cover a distance safely. The Del Mar superintendent has been in the business 38 years, has been a consultant for more than 150 tracks by his estimation, and swears by Peterson.

``The benefits he's provided have been huge," says Wood. ``He finds problems before they become [big] problems. The soil under the cushion changes a little bit, and the trackman can't see it or detect it -- you can't see 3 or 4 inches under the surface. But his ground-penetrating radar spots the shifts, and you can fix them right away. He's helped me four or five times, and I try to use him before every one of my meets.

``He's the only guy who does this kind of scientific testing. He's the brightest man I've ever met. And he's really into his work. He's a nut case."

All dolts should have such credentials. Peterson, 44, owns a doctorate in theoretical and applied mechanics from Northwestern -- where he never played the horses at Arlington ``because I was just a poor grad student." He spent five years as an assistant professor at Colorado State before accepting an associate professorship in Orono. Along the way, he has done some prestigious, in some cases momentous, work. In 2003, he headed a University of Maine team investigating the Columbia space shuttle's disintegration. They developed a sensor to monitor the durability and reliability of wing materials.

By then, Peterson had long been immersed in racing research. He began it as part of a team at Colorado State trying to reduce the number of thoroughbred fractures. He invented the equivalent of ``a robotic front leg for horses" but found that the truest test would be ``to replicate the horse's hooves hitting the ground at a track, the exact speed and load on the horse."

That evolved into his offshoot involving track surfaces, because faulty composition obviously could compromise a horse's steps. And future. Meanwhile, horsemen were decrying track conditions when they shipped from one emporium to another, and under various grants, Peterson launched his radar revolution.

It's not a popular revolution as yet, because horse racing often is mired in the muck of complacency, even though ``doggone it, it's not that healthy right now," says Peterson.

And Peterson's crusade is esoteric, to say the least. ``I was skeptical myself at first," says Wood. ``That's because I couldn't understand what he was saying; he's so intelligent. I questioned his findings, but they were right. It'll be huge when everyone starts doing it."

Among those tracks on Peterson's radar are Rockingham and Suffolk Downs, which he plans to approach.

``The only time I've been to Suffolk," he says, ``was to stop into an OTB facility to watch the races."

In the meantime, his realm is confined to tracks in California, Illinois, Kentucky, and Colorado.

If Peterson hasn't made many converts in racing, his exposure to the track has attracted a convert to racing. He never had set foot on the turf before his initial venture with Wood, at Santa Anita five years ago, and he was immediately enchanted.

``Standing there in the early morning, watching all those beautiful animals," he says, was galvanizing. ``Of all the research I've done, this is the most all-consuming." To such an extent that Peterson ``did a lot of it on his own," says Wood. ``He didn't get paid for it."

Which means he lost money on the deal, because while you wouldn't mistake Peterson for a degenerate horseplayer, ``I never let a big race go by without placing a bet," he says.

One exception was the recent Arlington Million, which Peterson had to bypass because of a scheduling conflict after inspecting the track. That didn't prevent him from indulging in some hypothetical wagering, which reinforced one notion.

``I checked the results against my picks," he says, ``and I said, `Well, I just saved myself $50.' What I've consistently learned is that I'm not any good at it."

At handicapping, that is. Fixing handicaps is another matter.