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Gloom and Doom

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 in The Sport on May 29, 2005

Neophyte Learns Racing Secret

Play hunches. Better yet, drop the slavish devotion to playing favorites. (SF Weekly)

Posted in The Sport on May 26, 2005

Proud Railbird, Meaningful Cog

“I’m a railbird, proud of it. I’m proud to be a meaningful cog in the mesmerizing circus that gathers around the thoroughbred racehorse. The hours spent trackside, win or lose, are a pleasure that makes the mad calliope of daily life bearable.” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Posted in The Sport on May 13, 2005

To Disclose or Not to Disclose

I’m repeating myself, reposting this Bill Finley ESPN column, but I wanted to say a little more about the issue of disclosure. What Finley writes, in the wake of the Sweet Catomine affair and owner Marty Wygod’s CHRB hearing, is that when it comes to the public getting information on a horse’s condition,

there has to be a better system in place than the one we have now, which is, basically, the public can be damned. At the very least, when a horse undergoes any kind of surgical procedure or is shipped to a veterinary clinic for treatment, which is where Sweet Catomine spent about 40 hours the week of the Santa Anita Derby, that information should be disclosed. Has a horse missed any serious training time of late? Have there been any serious infirmities since its last race? The betting public has a right to know.

This seems like a very reasonable position to me. If a horse has a myectomy or is treated for a bleeding episode between starts, that should be made known. Really, how different is disclosing this information from the disclosure bettors get now that a horse is on Lasix for the first time? Or that it’s wearing different shoes than previously reported? Or carrying x number of excess pounds?
Hank Wesch take a contrary stance in the Union-Tribune:

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, with much potential to mislead. And disclosure can be a double-edged sword with the capability of cutting anyone….

Two days before the 1990 Preakness, Kentucky Derby runner-up Summer Squall was observed bleeding from the nostrils while being grazed in the grassy area adjacent to the Pimlico stakes barn. Come race day, the little colt performed superbly and turned the tables on Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled.

In such instances, disclosure would have meant many bettors going to other horses and coming away with the feeling they’d fallen prey to a disinformation campaign designed to boost the odds on the winner they failed to have.

I don’t buy this argument — it ignores the fact that bettors already feel cheated by nondisclosure, and it’s patronizing. If anything, I’d expect bettors to feel less cheated if they were given such information and could incorporate it (or not, depending on their preference) into their handicapping, so long as clear guidelines for what should be disclosed were established and the information was reported consistently.

Posted in The Sport on April 27, 2005

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