The Gender Gap
There wasn’t much excitement about the Belmont the week before the race. No Triple Crown was on the line and there would be no rematch between the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winners. Trainer Patrick Biancone was planning to enter his allowance winner Time Squared and owner Larry Roman his grossly overmatched colt, Digger. There was a $1 million purse for the taking, and no one seemed to want it. But then trainer Todd Pletcher entered Rags to Riches, and suddenly, a race was on. There was a storyline, the battle of the sexes, something for handicappers and racing fans to talk about.
We see fillies run against males so rarely in American racing that the angle couldn’t be anything but compelling — I certainly wasn’t immune, especially when it seemed that so many dismissed Rags to Riches purely because of her gender, overlooking her 4-for-5 record, three Grade 1 wins this year (her last in the Kentucky Oaks, in which she ran the last eighth in :12 under a hand ride), speed, and pedigree, and although she would have been my pick for all those reasons on Saturday, there was the added frisson of wanting to see her win just because she was a filly. It was silly, and I admired the nonchalance of her owners, Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith, who seemed a little amused by the fuss, before and after, pointing out that in Europe fillies run against males often and it’s not much cause for comment.
Except, it is in America. Here, we race with the entrenched belief that female and male horses can’t compete fairly against each other. It’s an attitude that hasn’t changed much since Ruffian met Foolish Pleasure for the match race that would be her death, and it emerged after the Belmont, when, amid all the superlatives being heaped on a very deserving horse, some began to grouse that it was the five pound weight difference that gave Rags to Riches the edge, or her five-week layoff, or that Curlin bounced (in fact, figure-wise, he hardly regressed). Look again at the way she recovered from the stumble at the start, her wide trip throughout, and how she dug in and refused to let Curlin by even though he came at her again and again in the stretch. Rags to Riches was simply the better horse, and her win had nothing to do with gender.
What’s interesting, though, is how much some want to make it about gender. In the post-race press conference, a reporter asked Pletcher if there was anything “not ladylike” about Rags to Riches that made it possible for her to beat males on the track. Here’s Sherry Ross in the New York Daily News expanding on that theme:
Todd Pletcher calls Rags to Riches “a little bit bossy,” a polite way of saying that if the Belmont Stakes-winning filly were Naomi Campbell, she’d be bloodying her trainer with a cell phone.
Rags to Riches is Paris Hilton, only with talent and a healthy appetite. One time when Pletcher peeked in her stall and interrupted a meal, he said the filly came lunging at him “and almost took my head off.”
So when Pletcher described her as being “ornery as ever” yesterday morning after her historic win in Saturday’s 139th Belmont Stakes, that was a very good thing. She is entitled to act every bit the diva after becoming only the third filly ever to win the longest leg of the Triple Crown.
Rags to Riches, a diva? Ridiculous. She’s a horse, and a very good one, and her behavior around the feed tub is no different than that of many thoroughbreds, male or female.
But there’s a bigger issue obscured by all this chatter: American racing is sexist, and not only in regards to its equine athletes.
More than half of the sport’s fan base is female, women occupy more than 40% of racetrack jobs, and almost a quarter of the 2007 National Handicapping Championship competitors were women (and they weren’t all, despite what one contest staffer claimed, “beards”), but from the backside to the frontside to the grandstand, women are overlooked. On the backstretch, that marginalization affects women’s quality of life, safety, and economic opportunities. On the frontside and in the grandstand, it means fewer high level officials and and prominent owners, trainers, and handicappers than there ought to be.
A few numbers:
– Of the 42 members of the TRA board of directors, one is a woman.
– Of the 14 members of the NTRA board of directors, one is a woman (and she’s the first woman ever appointed to the NTRA board).
– Of the 25 candidates currently up for election to the Breeders’ Cup board, two are women.
– Of the 14 seniors officers and managers of Equibase, one is a woman.
– Of the 42 TRA member tracks, only one has a female president or CEO; of the 59 non-TRA member tracks, four have female managers.
– Of the 15 senior executives at the Daily Racing Form, one is a woman.
– Of the 155 bylined articles that appeared in the Daily Racing Form in a recent week, 13 were by women.
– Of the 20 starters in this year’s Kentucky Derby, one was conditioned by a female trainer.
– In the 133 years of the Kentucky Derby, only 13 female trainers have entered a Derby starter.
– Of the eight Kentucky Derby blogs posted on the official Derby web site, one was authored by a woman.
– Of all the guests that have so far appeared on the Youbet.com handicapping webcast, Playing to Win, zero have been women.
I could go on; there are plenty more examples out there, in the sport’s barns and offices, publications and literature. But there’s no need, I’m not revealing anything surprising. The subject percolates up periodically (most recently in February, when Equidaily posted on the topic).
The question is, what can be done about it? Rags to Riches winning the Belmont is a tremendous marketing moment for the sport, especially when it comes to reaching out to women. But does the sport know what to do with the opportunity? I’m expecting it to fumble, as it does so often — the culture and infrastructure that could capitalize on her game classic triumph doesn’t exist. And that’s a shame, because for racing to thrive in the future, it needs women as fans, and as handicappers, officials, and executives.
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