JC / Railbird

“A Fairly Simple Thing”

Reports DRF:

Another recommendation arising from the summit’s committees included the modification of the Jockey Club’s existing InCompass racing-office software to automatically identify horses who have been placed on vet’s lists or starter’s lists in other states. According to Peterson, some trainers ship horses out of the state in order to avoid complying with the conditions that are required to remove the horses from the lists, in the hopes that the state is not aware that the horse has been temporarily barred from racing.

“We frequently see horsemen who shop their horses around to other states,” Peterson said. “It’s a fairly simple thing to address.”

Wonderful. And why not take the change a step further? Make the resulting “Disabled List” accessible through the Equibase site so that those interested — fans curious about why a horse hasn’t started in a while, for instance — can more easily get basic information about a horse’s status.


4 Comments

Jessica, during yesterday’s media session, Dr. Rick Arthur noted that such lists are available to the public, though it was noted that they can be hard to track down. Though details of creating the database haven’t begun to be worked out, participants seemed amenable to its being public.

Posted by Teresa on June 30, 2010 @ 6:41 pm

PS: Omitted above: they are available in California.

Posted by Teresa on June 30, 2010 @ 6:41 pm

Jessica,

Great suggestion.

Posted by Ray Paulick on June 30, 2010 @ 10:34 pm

That’s the thing — the lists may be available, but they’re not uniformly so and can be difficult to find or use. The California list is one of the more visible, but it’s provided as a PDF. Glad to hear summit participants were agreeable to making a master list available to the public — I hope that means they’ll do so in a way that’s friendly to the public.

Thanks, Ray. It’s of a piece with the broader goal of making racing data more accessible.

Posted by Jessica on July 1, 2010 @ 9:37 am