JC / Railbird

I met Marc Subia today and he told me the story of his amazing autograph jacket. "It's my most prized possession." Marc started coming to Del Mar with his dad in the 1970s. It's his home track. And he's been collecting jockey autographs for decades ...

Grand Jete keeping an eye on me as I take a picture of Rushing Fall's #BC17 garland. #thoroughbred #horseracing #delmar

Another #treasurefromthearchive — this UPI collage for Secretariat vs. Sham. #inthearchives #thoroughbred #horseracing

Thanks, Arlington. Let's do this again next year. #Million35

That's a helmet. #BC16 #thoroughbred #horseracing #jockeys

Lady Eli on the muscle. #BC16 @santaanitapark #breederscup #thoroughbred #horseracing

Mass. Slots Bills Pending

A least half a dozen slots bills are pending before a Massachusetts legislature committee, although it appears unlikely there will be any debate on the bills before the fall. (Cape Code Times)

Posted by JC in State Issues on 05/31/2005 @ 9:00 am / Follow @railbird on Twitter

Is there something in the air? Pessimism regarding racing’s future seems to be everywhere lately. John Pricci is “filled with dread” and angry that politics and moralizing do-gooders are imperiling the sport, which:

… is being assailed on all sides, from the politically expedient to an indifferent mainstream press, from an issues-challenged industry media to the backstretch cheats. Racing is a state’s-rights-oriented industry that avoids when possible the mechanisms for policing itself on a national level. (MSNBC)

Nick Canepa isn’t feeling too cheery about the state of racing either:

Horse racing as we have known it appears to be slowly heading down the stretch. The once magnificent Sport of Kings is in danger of becoming the mundane sport of serfs — or slots. (San Diego Union-Tribune)

And then there’s this from Scott Van Voorhis:

Without Las Vegas-style slot machines, horse racing appears to be an endangered species. (Boston Herald)

The Herald article has what is possibly the most unsympathetic to racing quote I’ve seen anywhere:

William Thompson, a professor and gambling expert at the University of Las Vegas, contends the sport is dying and should be left to wither on its own.

If lawmakers feel they need to give one-armed bandits to racetracks to keep them alive, why not grant slot machines to struggling auto makers or dying steel mills?

“We are failing, therefore give us gaming. It’s an absurd argument,” Thompson argued.

“Free enterprise means the freedom to succeed and fail. Failure is extremely important. People take money out of failed enterprises and shift it to enterprises that work.”

Professor Thompson is obviously not a racing fan.
Certainly some of this pessimism is warranted. The latest numbers on handle from California and New York, for instance, aren’t good. Wagering is down more than 4% across California this year, and handle was down 15% for Aqueduct’s winter/spring meet (Blood-Horse). Alan at Left at the Gate discusses NYRA’s dropping handle, and points out that the concomitant 18% decline in attendance is particularly ominous.
Suffolk won’t announce any figures on attendance and handle until the end of the meet, but I won’t be surprised if there’s a 5-10% decline. Bad weather dogged the first four weeks of racing and there’s no MassCap this year. Yesterday, however, was a lovely day — the sun finally came out, the temperature was in the low 70s, and a small crowd of about 4,000 was at Suffolk. My racing companion and his sister came out with me and we sat in the box seats overlooking the paddock and the finish line, watching the horses and cashing an occasional ticket, happily whiling away the afternoon. It was the sort of lazy early summer day at the track that makes all the bad news about racing seem impossible.

Posted by JC in The Sport on 05/29/2005 @ 5:30 pm / Follow @railbird on Twitter

“Hard-Hitting Throwback”

Steven Crist writes a nice column about Afleet Alex, praising him for being competitive as a two-year-old and a three-year-old, something that doesn’t happen often anymore:

More recently, it has become practically a given that it’s just too much to ask the modern racehorse to be competitive at the highest levels of both 2-year-old and 3-year-old racing. Exceptions such as Point Given seem more exceptional with each passing year. Before this year, we had three consecutive Derby-Preakness winners in War Emblem, Funny Cide, and Smarty Jones who among them did not even compete in a graded stakes as 2-year-olds. You had to go back to Summer Squall in 1989 to find a Hopeful winner who returned to win a Triple Crown race — until Afleet Alex.

The list of Grade 1 races that Afleet Alex has competed in is remarkable in and of itself: the Hopeful, Champagne, Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Kentucky Derby, and Preakness. He has won or been right there in all of them, and is a combined 2 1/4 lengths from having won all five, having lost the Champagne by a half-length, the Juvenile by three-quarters, and the Derby by a length. In an era when horses’ campaigns are craftily managed to find the likeliest venues to showcase them in narrow fields of specialization, Afleet Alex has run time after time in the biggest races against the best horses over different tracks and distances. (Daily Racing Form — sub. req.)

For a good example of how widespread this expectation is that a horse who’s racing at the highest level as a two-year-old won’t be as a three-year-old, check out this Bill Finley ESPN column from last August after Afleet Alex won the Hopeful Stakes. “Come the first Saturday in May, 2005,” wrote Finley,

You can rest assured that Afleet Alex will not duplicate Smarty Jones’ Kentucky Derby victory. That’s not necessarily a knock on the horse. It’s just that he’ll be attempting to do something that horses just can’t seem to do anymore. You can’t be at your best in mid-August and still at your best in early May.

He was half right …
—
Crist also makes an excellent point in his column about the love for flash over substance in racing:

Consistency, durability, and versatility have come to be regarded as quaint virtues from grandfather’s era, less important than a few dazzling weeks in the spotlight ending with a lucrative financial transaction involving commercial breeders.

And Gary West makes a similar complaint about a different horse, writing that Ghostzapper may be redefining greatness:

The new definition will emphasize flashes of brilliance rather than prolonged accomplishment. Under the new standard of greatness, a horse won’t be expected to defeat rivals while carrying significantly more weight, won’t have to overcome unfavorable circumstances and certainly won’t have to sustain a superlative level of performance over a few seasons. (Star-Telegram)

Posted by JC in Horses on 05/27/2005 @ 7:05 am / Follow @railbird on Twitter

← Before After →

Mass. Slots Bills Pending

Gloom and Doom

“Hard-Hitting Throwback”