Odds & Ends
In his Lowell Sun column this week, Paul Daley interviews Gary Donahue, a jockey paralyzed in 1986. Until dismissed from the position in 2003, Donahue was co-chairperson of the Jockeys’ Guild Disabled Jockeys Fund. His questions about the fund’s depletion helped set in motion the changes in Jockeys’ Guild management made last Tuesday.
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There’s an interesting Letter to the Editor in last Friday’s Daily Racing Form from one Lenny Moon of Maryland, who writes to suggest that the public be given information about how horses behave in NYRA’s detention barn. “It is unfair to everyone who wagers to have such critical information withheld,” he says, referring specifically to the poor performances of Lost in the Fog and Joey P. on Breeders’ Cup Day after both were supposedly rattled in the detention barn. This isn’t a bad idea: Most horses that I saw in the Saratoga detention barn last summer took to the quarantine without problem, but a few freaked out (sometimes violently) at the change in routine or at the barn area itself and only a small number of those were scratched before a race because of their distress. The rest were sent to the track nervous or already spent. There must be a way this information could be codified and disseminated, much like shoe changes and overweights are, before races.
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The December issue of the Atlantic Monthly has a great short article about the business of slot machines (no link because the article is available online only to subscribers). I never play the things — I find chasing after dumb luck dull and most casino/racino environments depressing — but I’m obviously in the minority. Among the surprising statistics cited in the article: “America now has twice as many publicly available gambling devices that take money — slot and video poker machines and electronic lottery outlets — as it does ATMs that dispense it … This year a record 73 million Americans will visit one of 1,200 gambling joints now stretching from coast to coast … More than a quarter of American adults now list gambling as their No. 1 entertainment choice.” More than a quarter of adults? Who are these people? More importantly, how can racing find them?
