Nothing To See Here

These are just the headlines from today's DRF, but I'm tired, I can't keep waking up every morning and perusing the news only to be inundated with this crap.  Horseracing is and has always been dying since the 70's, but I gotta admit these last 5 years have felt like it's been dying a bit faster, and the last 6 months feel like a flat line.  Maybe I'm paying more attention, but it seems like every track is making do or die decisions.  I also have to say I'm tired of all the "fixes".  Everyone means well, we all want to see our sport returned to some sort of glory, but it's not going to happen through fan opinion.  If change was going to come through customer concern it would have happened by now. Although there is one final idea I have....   I was the big optimist, I was the customer with ideas, but I think the window for optimism and ideas coming from a good place is now over and the window on forced, painful change is now open.  So, here's my final idea... if you are in charge of a race track looking for "ideas" QUIT.  You are part of the problem, everyone knows what the fixes are stop coming to your fans w/ outstretched arms like you don't know what the problem is.  If you're part of a board that has some bullshit function in the industry and hasn't done anything to fix the big problems of racing QUIT, and in the process try and take the whole board with you, stop putting out press releases about irrelevant crap and realize you're not doing anything and your board isn't doing anything and go down in a blaze of glory.  If you're a state politician and you don't know what to do don't listen to the asshats from either side, let's go federal with this monstrosity of a sport, and see how they cry and complain and change real fast. Do you think if horse racing was invented today it would be structured like it is today?  It wouldn't.  So change needs to occur.  The longer they wait the more painful it is for everyone.

“Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.”

The subject of this post was suggested by the Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance, and other posts like it will be found at the TBA homepage throughout the day for Wild hot Topic Friday.  The subject this week: State Of Racing: Will the current hard economic times and state ineptitude lead to a brighter racing future?  Will failures in any big racing state like California, Kentucky, or New York lead to a brighter future?  I agree w/ the title of this post, which is a Lily Tomlin quotation, that things have to get a lot worse before they can get better.  How long has horse racing been on life support? 10, 20 years? A long time, and things are still getting worse:  Turfway cutting Kentucky Cup races, California has issues filling races and has cut days, New York has picked what seems to be 5 VLT operators all of whom operate out of the back of vans over the last 3 years, and Illinois, well it might not be as big as the other 3, but it ain't pretty there either.  Is this the bottom, are we ready for our intervention moment? I was hoping we were close at the end of 2008  but here we are mid 2010, I wrote about it in March of 2009, but here we are mid 2010. And just like the swallows return to Capistrano we have everyone with their way to fix racing, like it's something new.  It's not.  There are plenty of great ideas out there (mostly mine, I kid), but we don't need a good idea, we need pain.  I'm sorry to write that, but after following this sport closely for a decade now I realize that it's not a lack of good ideas, but a lack of motivation.  Good ideas are never a good motivator, going out of business is.

Solution Under Our Noses

The subject of this post was suggested by the Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance, and other posts like it will be found at the TBA homepage throughout the day for Wild hot Topic Friday.  When you sit back it's kind of funny really.  Ask any horse racing fan what their favorite track is and you'll probably get 1 of 3 answers:  Keeneland, Del Mar, or Saratoga.  It's funny because if you wanted to say what's successful about horse racing you'd point to those 3 tracks.  It's sad because you'd think it wouldn't take economic Armageddon to force tracks to adopt the boutique racing model.  It's even sadder that Saratoga keeps growing in days and you hear more and more people complain about their midweek cards, or their weekend cards with no graded stakes, and I get the feeling that the smart guys over at NYRA are thinking about running year round at Saratoga w/ a 2 week boutique meet at Aqueduct in December. (I kid)[at least I hope I'm kidding]. So what happens next?  Are boutique meets the future?  I certainly hope so.  The downsides are well known, less racing dates, means less horses, means less jobs, but if it also means a self sustaining viable industry with a good image then there is no choice.  My home is Monmouth Park, and I can't tell you how much of a difference it has made.  I'm talking beyond dollars; walking into that track on the weekend, it just seems like a nicer place.  Bigger crowds, more noise as the horses come to the wire, more people in the paddock, more people talking to each other; just adds to a great day out, the image of the place changed overnight.  I want to see Monmouth get leaner and meaner in the next few seasons, we'll see how it pans out.

A Regal Ransom

The subject of this post was suggested by the Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance, and other posts like it will be found at the TBA homepage throughout the day.  Being a Monmouth homer you can bet I'm excited that Rachel Alexandra will be making her next stop in the Garden State.  But, I have to admit that in prior instances the extra money that Mr Jackson pulls out of the tracks makes me feel a little uneasy inside.  Listen, (or read), when Rachel is on the track there is going to be more people in the seats, at home, and wagering, but $250k more?  I don't know.  I'm not begrudging or second guessing what Mr Jackson or Monmouth is doing.  But I guess I'm just nervous mostly.  It's not like racetracks have a great record of making responsible money decisions. I guess though Monmouth knows what they are doing.  They did this 2 years ago with Big Brown and his first try on Turf.  It was a wonderful experience, and I'd have to imagine Rachel is just the same draw as he was maybe even more so.  We got a practice walk out in the paddock w/ Big Brown, I wonder if Rachel will ship in a few days early, that'd be nice.  Ok back to retirement.