NYRA
Day 1 Post-NYC OTB
Crisis has a way of focusing the attention. And so it was that in a matter of minutes, during an emergency meeting of the New York State Racing and Wagering board held Wednesday in the wake of NYC OTB’s closure (audio), it became possible for New York horseplayers to sign up instantly for online wagering accounts instead of in person as previously required. The process was streamlined in an attempt to capture shut-out OTB players. “This is a crisis situation and we’re trying to react because people will find their way to a barber shop or the corner bar [to bet], and that helps no one, not the racing industry or the state,” board chairman John Sabini told the Associated Press. (The silver lining to this mess may be that things get a little easier for horseplayers, although it doesn’t sound like that will be so re: streaming video of races. Disappointing. And dumb.)
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.
Accommodations
It’s He Said, He Said round two with Paulick and DeRosa, and although I think Ed’s in the right and that in general, conversations about racing, marketing, and women are good to have, I also think that it’s a luxury to be in a position where all we’re talking about is a creepy-sexist Churchill Downs banner ad.
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 rundown 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 and 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 room. 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 the bathroom or trying to peep into the shower room. This was — for some women — actually an improvement. Another stablehand told me that the situation was better at Saratoga than at Belmont, where 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 stablehands 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 face challenges created 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 women like her, the backstretch workers who will move into the shabby Clare Court dorm at Saratoga next summer and who will have to wonder who’s standing in the hallway while they shower.
Whenever, Whatever
Jerry Bossert rants about NYRA’s delayed photo finish uploads:
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.”
NY Stewards Go Public
Hooray! Or should I say, about time!
NYRA announces stewards’ decisions will be made public:
Directly following any decision they make having to do with the official order of finish, including inquiries and objections, the stewards … will provide an explanation of what happened and the reason for their decision. That information will then be communicated via the NYRA television feed and will be posted on the new Stewards’ Corner section on NYRA.com …
“This new policy is a big step forward in providing transparency of the stewards’ decision making,†NYRA President and CEO Charles Hayward said. “Millions of dollars are bet every day at NYRA tracks and customers should know why decisions are made in the stewards’ stand.â€
Why, yes, bettors should. This is the page to bookmark.
About
Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
Elsewhere
Find Jessica on Pinboard and Instagram, Railbird on LibraryThing and Twitter.
Etc.
Links
Search
Boston Racing
Spreadsheets/Data
← Home
Copyright © 2000-2023 by Jessica Chapel. All rights reserved.