… now things are starting to change. Where will the sport be when the slots money starts to go away? Whatever the answer is, it’s not a good one.

NYRA president Charlie Hayward speaking in support of full-fledged casinos:

“The racing industry will get 16 percent of the racino’s net earnings,” Hayward said. “We can take a little bit of pain in terms of reduced handle.”

In Hayward’s favor, NYRA numbers are strong post-NYC OTB.

“He came out fantastic, legs ice cold, jogging sound at the shed row and ate up everything,” Santa Anita’s three-time training king said.

Nice to hear! The Donn could be next for ‘Eddie.

This is Todd Pletcher gushing about early Derby fave Uncle Mo:

“Yes, I think he will get better,” Pletcher said. “And it’s kind of scary to think about that.”

The famously cool trainer just can’t contain himself, can he?

Jerry Bossert’s a fan of the Belmont Café:

It’s amazing, but in a month the NYRA put together a better OTB than NYCOTB, which opened its first parlor in 1971.

Almost makes me wish I still lived in New York so I could check the place out.

Culture clash at the Big A? “I feel like I’m in an OTB! I feel like I’m in an OTB!,” LATG overhears an Aqueduct patron telling a security guard. Friday was the one month anniversary of NYC OTB’s closure. Funny, but the parlors already seem like something out of the far past, which I suppose says something about how removed from the mainstream life of the city they had become. (If you’d like to remember days at the OTB, here’s an unexpectedly poignant little video that captures the operation’s waning hours.) While there are some pains as the new element is absorbed into the track scene, NYRA’s efforts to attract displaced OTB bettors are paying off with higher ontrack handle and 2,434 new NYRA Rewards customers since December 8. On Saturday, the new Belmont Café took in a high point $137,889 in wagers from 325 players. “It just goes to show you that simple accommodations — a clean bathroom and a decent place to eat — can go a long way,” writes Jerry Bossert. There’s a still a significant shortfall in NYRA’s total handle, but the trend is positive.

So, the investigation into the l’affaire Life at Ten is ongoing, with the Office of the Inspector General in the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet being brought in “to have some independent review for certain aspects of it.” That’s KHRC executive director Lisa Underwood talking to Jennie Rees, who also reports that the KHRC has conducted 90 interviews regarding the Breeders’ Cup Distaff Ladies’ Classic fiasco. Ninety? Once this investigation concludes, how about another into what’s been a frustratingly opaque and slow process.

A New Year’s resolution particularly relevant to the above: “Protect the punter.”

Final handle numbers for 2010 were down 7.3% from 2009, to $11.4 billion from $12.3 billion. That’s the lowest annual total since 1995. “Obviously, we are losing bettors to other forms of gambling,” TRA executive vice president Chris Scherf tells Janet Patton. “We are in the midst of an unmanaged, market-driven contraction touching most aspects of the racing business.” Unmanaged is the key word, and nowhere is that more apparent right now that in the date dispute shaping up in southern Florida between Calder and Gulfstream. As for losing out to other games, sports bettors and poker players are pretty upfront about why they’re not paying much attention to racing.

Non-union employees may get their additional money, but in the process NYRA has generated enough bad feeling to guarantee it will come back to bite the association when it wants something in the future.

That’s absurd. Here’s the thing: 3% — or even the average 5.5% given to 10 employees — isn’t that much money. NYRA president Charles Hayward, who defended the raises as the first given non-union workers since January 2008, told the Blood-Horse that the raises will cost NYRA approximately $600,000 in added payroll next year. That works out to around $1835 a year (or $153 a month, $35 a week) per employee, which raises the average salary of those workers from approximately $60,000 a year to around $62,000 a year. That’s $62,000 in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and at a time of great challenge to NYRA — with NYC OTB closing last week, and the Aqueduct racino opening in 2011, NYRA needs to retain its workers (and it really needs its workers to feel good about their jobs) if it’s not only going to survive what’s ahead, but come out thriving. Giving end-of-the-year raises to the rank-and-file is a strategic and morale-boosting move at a crucial moment in the organization’s history. Sorry, but there’s nothing outrageous about that.

The New York City system wagered $9.6 million on Turfway Park races in 2009, resulting in $169,000 in revenues that were split between Turfway and its horsemen through purses, said Bob Elliston, president of the Florence, Ky. track. This year, with fewer Turfway racing dates, the total so far is just over $5 million, resulting in $87,000 in revenue split between Turfway and horsemen, he said.

That’s about 1.75 cents per dollar wagered. Turf Paradise had a slightly better deal, but NYC OTB still wasn’t adding much to the pot, reports DRF:

Vince Francia, the general manager of Turf Paradise, said on Friday that New York City OTB bettors had wagered $3.7 million on Turf’s signal since the track opened on Oct. 1, or about $77,000 a day. Because of New York City OTB’s bargaining power, Turf Paradise only kept 2 percent of that money as the simulcast fee, Francia said, for total revenue of $1,540 a day, an amount that was split with horsemen.

Yikes.

12/21/10 Addendum: New York breeders aren’t missing NYC OTB much either after two years of not receiving payments. “If you’re not getting anything it’s hard to feel like you’re losing something.”

Meanwhile, on Friday, the state senate Republicans announced the newly formed Task Force on the Revitalization of the Racing Industry in New York. Said task force member senator John Bonacic: “Racing is more than about people sitting in betting parlors. It is about the sport — making the tracks viable as racing entities — not just places where VLTs are played. We need to focus on helping the breeders and horsemen since they are the infrastructure that develops a successful racing product. We then need to market racing in a manner which brings fans to the track and generates interest in the sport overall.” Good luck, New Yorkers. [12/13/10 Addition: Over on ESPN, Paul Moran comments: "But wherever there is a New York politician, there is never the lack of calamity."]

Juvenile graded stakes racing winds down for the year with the Hollywood Starlet, which drew eight fillies, today and the Hollywood Futurity next Saturday. “A field of 13 or 14 is shaping up for the 30th running of the race,” including JP’s Gusto and Delta Jackpot winner Gourmet Dinner. Joe Talamo, back from injury, will be on JP’s Gusto once again. The jockey rode the horse through his first three starts. Pat Valezuala then had the mount through the Breeders’ Cup, winning the Del Mar Futurity and Best Pal with JP’s Gusto.

What a process, getting Zenyatta settled into farm life.

On the second day without NYC OTB, on-track attendance was still up, and on-track handle spiked by almost 11% over Wednesday, 12.8% over the previous Thursday. Interstate handle declined from the day before, but was up a tiny 1.3% over last Thursday. The ugly number is intrastate handle, which was down 4.6% over Wednesday, and almost 39.1% from last Thursday. How much of that was money moving? The difference in on-track handle from Wednesday to Thursday is plus $53,125; intrastate handle minus $40,000. If most of the upped on-track dollars were formerly intrastate wagers, then NYRA made gains, even if small. Over on LATG, Alan Mann estimates that NYRA needs to “capture one-third of the wagers placed on its races at NYC OTB in order to break even,”* and it does seem as though they’re doing all they can to grab those bettors, if the flurry of press releases sent out today is any indication, offering double points to customers signing up for NYRA Rewards before December 31, opening up Belmont for simulcasting beginning this Sunday, and looking for a way to get the races back on TV in the city.

In a comment yesterday, EJXD2 said, “I wish people would stop lamenting the death of NYC OTB and instead celebrate that a corrupt system is no more.” Fair enough. Huzzah! NYC OTB is dead! But there’s not much time for lamenting or celebrating. John Pricci called December 7, “the beginning of the end of the modern era of racing in New York,” and while we may not look back on that as such a bad thing, given how troubled the era passing became in its latter days, there’s pain ahead due to lost livelihoods and inevitable structural changes. The bright side (really) is now that closure has come to pass, and action is necessary before the whole industry goes broke, New York has an opportunity to blow up the dysfunctional OTB system and replace it with a streamlined operation** better suited to supporting racing in the contemporary market, which means efficient management and an approach to customers that’s less get-your-fix and more have-great-fun. It won’t be easy, but it must be done.

*8:15 PM Update: Talking to reporters in the Aqueduct press box this morning, NYRA CEO Charles Hayward confirmed that’s about right: “Hayward estimated that NYRA has to try and make up for 35 percent of what NYCOTB handled at its parlors because only 2.4 percent of each dollar wagered at an OTB parlor goes to NYRA, compared with 10 percent of each dollar wagered ontrack.”

**12/10/10 Update: Writes Jerry Bossert in the NY Daily News: “I’m all for it, but it will never happen as there would then be only one President, one vice-president, one director of marketing, etc. It will never fly as there are too many patronage jobs out there currently occupying all those seats in the other five regions.” I fear he’s right — political considerations have held up past attempts at reform — but maybe NYC OTB closing was just the shock needed to make this time different. (Via @BklynBckstretch.)

David Grening reports in DRF that 61 new NYRA Rewards accounts were opened on Wednesday, presumably by OTB customers who made their way to the track. Aqueduct attendance figures were up, compared to Thursday, December 2 (NYRA canceled racing on Wednesday, December 1) and Wednesday, November 24; handle numbers were down, according to figures reported by the Thoroughbred Times. While average total handle decreased “only” 4%, no doubt aided by a lack of racing in California, Florida, and Kentucky on Wednesday to distract simulcast players, intrastate handle was down more than 36% over December 2 and almost 47% over November 24. A number that didn’t show much of a change was on-track handle. Despite a 26% spike in attendance, on-track handle was up a mere 1.65% over December 2. One of those attending, and probably not betting, was Jesus Leonardo, an NYC OTB stooper profiled in the New York Times earlier this year. In a phone interview with the Times on Wednesday, Leonardo said he plans to keep on stooping, at Aqueduct and other tracks in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.

“OTB was horrible, and horribly run, in many many ways. But the OTB parlors were places like no other and I, for one, will miss them,” writes the blogger Fat Al on The Half-Empty Glass. I will too. There’s no getting around that the storefront parlors were often as unpleasant as their critics alleged, but OTB was a distinct New York City subculture and — this probably reveals something about me I’d rather conceal — the dingy little shops with their oddball collection of characters were some of the few places I ever felt at home in the four years I lived in the city. On particularly unhappy days, I’d slip into a parlor downtown, and enjoy the anonymous companionship of others staring intently at programs and talking horses and hoping for that one big win. “I liked to watch people come in,” Bill Barich wrote in his classic horseplayer’s memoir, “Laughing in the Hills”:

They were intent, blind to their surroundings, and they all looked terrific, at least until the first race had gone off. Optimism put a bloom in every cheek. Anything might happen, could happen, probably would happen, that was the notion being entertained at OTB.

No longer.

In the Saratogian on Saturday, Michael Veitch took NYRA to task for backing off earlier statements promising racino monies for backstretch housing:

Despite numerous statements by NYRA in recent years on the importance of improving living conditions at Saratoga as a first need, it now appears purse money and other improvements are more important….

With money finally available to help improve their living conditions, the association is going to back off previous assurances? You must be kidding.

I haven’t been in a Saratoga dorm since 2005, but it seems safe to assume conditions aren’t much changed. The buildings are probably still run-down and ill-maintained, and the women’s dorms probably aren’t much more comfortable or secure. In 2005, 15% of the available rooms on the Saratoga backstretch were allocated to female workers, even though female workers made up almost a third of backstretch labor. That meant overcrowding; every room in the women’s Clare Court dorm had 2-4 residents. I shared a 9×11 space with two others for six weeks. The room fit our beds, not much else.

That there wasn’t enough space wasn’t the only issue. The Clare Court dorm was also unsecured, and while residents could lock their individual rooms, they couldn’t lock the bathrooms or shower rooms. There were no locks on those doors, which opened, and were often left open, to hallways accessible to anyone who wandered in through the open front and back doors. And men did wander in. It wasn’t unusual to find one lurking just outside or trying to peep through. The wild thing is, another woman told me that the situation was actually better at Saratoga — at Belmont, the men cut peepholes.

At least in the ad the guy with binoculars is looking at clothed women.

There is a problem with sexism in racing, and it’s not only in advertising, or the patronizing male attitudes Penny Chenery is depicted as overcoming in “Secretariat.” Female stable help live and work with — as an anonymous hotwalker recently wrote — unwanted, and sometimes physical, attentions. They live with assaults on their privacy and dignity, and occasionally, on their persons. There’s a lot of “friendly banter” in the barns that isn’t so friendly — it’d be called sexual harassment almost anywhere else — and for women living in precarious backstretch housing, the talk is tinged with threat. As for why more women don’t speak up — the reasons range from a determination to be seen as tough and not a complainer, to not knowing where to go or who to talk to about what’s happening. And it’s complicated, as I commented elsewhere, by the fact that a significant number of female backstretch workers are marginalized by class and language, as well as gender.

I’d like to be more upset about Churchill’s banner, but I keep thinking about the anonymous hotwalker, and about the women like her, the backstretch workers who will move into the shabby Clare Court dorm at Saratoga next summer and have to wonder who’s standing in the hallway while they shower.

The only problem is it’s not on demand. It’s whenever the Teletimer operator wants to put the picture on the Web. On closing day at Saratoga, there was a three-horse photo separating Frivolous Buck, Gitchee Goomie and Tutti Va Bene for first, second and third place in the eighth race. The photo never made it up until after the 11th and final race of the card, after plenty fans from across the country called wanting to see it. The operator had a cavalier attitude when asked about it, saying he doesn’t get paid extra for it. This is why this sport is dying. The people in charge don’t care …

Related: John Pricci elaborates on the recent tensions between NYRA and the racing media, mentioned by Nick Kling at the close of Saratoga. Nothing negative, please. “Given the prevailing philosophy at the new NYRA,” writes Pricci, “there is no need for a press office, only a marketing department.”