(Note: I want to make it clear up front that I thank the DRF for doing the survey referenced in this piece. It was an important effort and the questions they asked were very relevant. If I make some criticisms or attempts at humor below, they are not meant at the expense of DRF. They did their job and it is up to us to continue the discussion.)
The Daily Racing Form (DRF) released the results of an online survey on the priorities horseracing must address. There were 1,860 respondents to the survey, which seems like a disappointing amount considering how many people either go to the track or bet remotely. In fact, only 70 oercent of the people who took the time to respond identified themselves as bettors or racing fans. I’m sure a portion of the other 30 percent were animal rights supporters, especially since the number one issue for the group that either didn’t bet or bet less than $5,000 a year was animal welfare. You can decide whether the survey was representative of the broader fan base, but in any case the results were worth talking about.
While passionate discussions about Lasix have dominated many racing message boards, the 1,860 respondents did little to resolve the schism over the race-day use of the medication. 41 percent said they supported the use of race-day Lasix, while 42 percent said they were opposed. That only adds up to 83 percent because 17 percent of the folks answering the survey had no opinion.
Are you kidding me? This is racing’s equivalent of the issue that divided the states in the mid 1800s’s. It is stunning to imagine almost a fifth of the people were apathetic about Lasix. I bet I could grab a hundred people randomly at the mall and ask them if the Ludovico Technique is a promising cure for youth violence and get less than 17 percent no-opinion.
I can’t repeat the names I’ve been called for suggesting that race-day Lasix isn’t the seminal issue of our time. In fact, 41 pro, 42 con and 17 what-the-hell-is-Lasix is disappointing whether you are pro, con or totally apathetic. Nobody gets to say “aha” with those numbers.
With the DRF survey the anti-Lasix crowd had a chance to drive home the point that Lasix, which if I am reading the Water, Hay, Oats Alliance (WHOA) literature correctly is a scourge along the lines of the Black Death between 1346 and 1353, by proving that once racing fans (and another 30 percent who apparently can’t resist anything survey monkey puts out) have a chance to make their opinions known, they will overwhelmingly send racing a message – no more race-day Lasix. Not only did the survey fail to arouse the ire of whomever it was that submitted responses, when asked where race-day Lasix fell in terms of importance to the health of racing, the survey mouse-clickers placed it ninth of ten issues, I’m guessing behind overpriced food and too many toilets with “out of order” signs on them.
The survey broke down the information even finer. Support for race-day Lasix was strongest among racing fans that bet no money or less than $5,000 a year. That group supported the ban 50 percent to 35%. The group that bet more than $25,000 a year favored race-day use 45 percent to 35 percent. This may just be me, but for obvious reasons I’m inclined to put a steep discount on the opinions of most of the group that doesn’t bet money, mostly because I wonder how many of them are really interested in the long term success of racing. The people primarily supporting racing are more fine than not with Lasix.
So, the survey was no help to either side of the Lasix issue. However, the DRF story pointed out that “bettors overwhelmingly believe that horsemen are getting away with using illicit drugs that affect horses performance on race-day despite little evidence that cheating is widespread in racing, such as a glut of positive drug tests for illicit drugs or the seizure of illegal substances at racetracks or training centers.”
They followed that up with the statistic 78 percent of all respondents said that states have not been effective in catching cheaters.
This is a real conundrum for racing. How do you catch the cheaters who apparently aren’t cheating? I don’t mean the less than one-half of one percent of the trainers who were cited for overages of legal therapeutic medication. We’ve nailed them. I mean the horsemen using “illicit drugs” and “illegal substances” that racing commissions haven’t been able to find by doing blood and urine tests and searching barns. I watch enough TV to know nobody is more than three mouse clicks away from getting nailed once the alphabet agencies put their mind to finding them, so it’s only a matter of time before that conspiracy is busted wide open, unless of course it has been thoroughly overblown by those who can’t believe losing has anything to do with bad handicapping or betting, or who believe racing management needs a new (federal) paradigm. (I also know that our Navy has been seriously depleted due to all the deaths on NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles and NCIS New Orleans. Their new slogan, Join the Navy and You Might Wind Up as a Corpse on TV, isn’t working very well either.) It would be pretty hard to successfully argue for oversight by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) or federal legislation using existing compliance statistics, so it serves a purpose to promote the idea that illegal drug use is not only rampant, but the stumblebums in charge of finding it apparently couldn’t find water if they fell out of a boat.
The survey also pointed out that the use of illicit drugs was ranked second on the list of the top 10 issues facing racing. I’ll admit, I’m at a loss on how to deal with the illicit drug issue, mostly because the overwhelming perception of the existence of these drugs disallows any finding that the problem is mainly imaginary. If some credible entity did a thorough investigation and didn’t find anything, I’m not sure how much it would change that perception. For example, a Harris poll in 2013 found that 42% of people believe in ghosts, and I can tell you from personal experience that criticizing the thought process of a fervent ghost-believer is a mistake you only want to make once. I’ve said this on a number of occasions, but it is so often true that opinion trumps fact (did I say trump?).
The unfortunate fact is that with nothing more than what seems to be anecdotal evidence, respondents ranked catching illegal drugs as the second most important issue facing racing, and followed that with the need to have uniform medication regulations. Whether or not the proliferation of illegal and undetectable performance-enhancing drugs is the top problem racing faces, the fact that so many people believe it is qualifies it as something racing needs to address. Once and for all horseplayers, horsemen, owners, track management and the administrative governing bodies need to put the issue to rest one way or the other. If the proliferation of illegal drugs is real, then they need to make a public splash about how they will find and eradicate them. And if it is the boogeyman kids see outside their bedroom window, then the stakeholders need to come to firm agreement on that and move the hell on.
You don’t need me to tell you that racing is doomed, doomed I tell you, until this issue is put to bed. There is only one side on the issue of illegal and performance-enhancing drugs – they need to be gotten the hell out of racing and anyone who knowingly tries to gain an illegal advantage has to be dealt with without equivocation. And then let’s get to the really important issues like takeout rates, gambling taxes and reporting requirements, and field size.
I’ve written extensively on the problem with the racing structure. Tracks are required to pay a tithe to state and local governments and are disallowed from functioning as most other private businesses function. You have revenues, you have costs, and the difference between the two is profit (or loss) on which you should pay taxes. I get the states’ argument they have expenses related to the administrative governing bodies and testing, but that is an artifact of the state being a partner in the business, something that would be anathema to most capitalists.
Look at the On-track percentages of handle that Santa Anita pays (based on 35% straight and 65% exotic wagering):
- State license fees 6.24%
- UC Davis (testing) 0.10%
- City Fees 0.33%
- CTBA 0.47%
- Track Revenues 6.23%
- Purse Revenues 5.15%
- Total Takeout 18.52%
How do you get the take down to 12 percent? Cut the state share? CTBA? Agree to lower revenues to cover track expenses? Cut purses? The only way that has been guaranteed to work to cut the take is to not run a race meet at all, pay a few percent for the racing signal, take the small amount you need to cover operating expenses, define your profit and distribute the rest in the form of rebates to whales.
And good luck on the gambling tax issue. If you find a dollar on the street, the IRS wants its cut. The only group lower on the list for tax relief than gamblers is legal marijuana retailers. Who is your champion? Which politician is going to run on a platform of cutting taxes for the horseplayer? Even the trickle down zanies never mention giving the horseplayer his break. In fact, we are below DEAD people for tax cuts.
As for field size, I’ve recently (halveyonhorseracing.com/?p=2435) written about this. I know many horseplayers long for Hong Kong with its 14-horse fields every race, but those large fields primarily benefit the heavy bettor by spreading action and increasing the payout on smaller probability combinations. Believe me, unless you are betting $3-5,000 a week, you’ll do much better with 8-10 horse fields. Yes, five and six horse fields are bad for everyone, but 720 combinations for a trifecta (as opposed to 2,184) gives the less capitalized bettor a running chance.
The final issue the DRF reported on is the overwhelming support of a federal solution. I’m just going to say this. Think that one through. The USADA right now performs about 9,000 tests a year. How do you think they are going to get to 325,000 without using the same testing labs states are already using? And if you’ve read some of the recent press, USADA has been pilloried for their contract work for boxing. Once again, you have to believe the imaginary illegal drugs have the sport in a death grip to conclude there will be some major turn around under USADA. You have to believe in a conspiracy of epic proportions where horsemen, stewards and the racing commission are either suppressing drug use or refusing to prosecute it. You have to believe that the testing labs with multi-million dollar equipment are purposely not finding the as-of-yet unidentified illegal drugs, but somehow the USADA will have them find it. You have to be in a fog to believe people like Joe Gorajec didn’t pressure the labs to find anything and everything in a sample that was prosecutable.
I ask one thing. Think this through. Get all the gory details before you decide Barr-Tonko is the answer. Don’t leave this to some yet to be named bureaucrat to write the rules.
Oh and ask yourself one question. Is the Congress that can’t even pass a budget among other myriad failures the right entity to save racing?