Have you ever been to Saratoga on a high attendance day like the Whitney or the Travers? It looks like the Oklahoma land rush when the gates open and people sprint for a picnic table in the back of the track. The dollar store must sell enough disposable plastic table cloths in August to keep China’s factories humming year round.  This year the track finally realized that in addition to charging people more to get into the track, you can also start selling the picnic tables, so on Travers day 130 picnic tables will go on sale for $100 each. The other 670 or so will still be subject to the land rush. You know what they say. Every $13 grand helps.

The plastic seats in front of the TV banks just inside the grandstand fill up about as quickly. Every square inch of open grass or dirt fills up in moments with people who bring lawn chairs with them. I feel sorry for the neophytes who come to the track thinking there will be places to sit only to find pretty much every fanny friendly spot to be occupied. And horrors if it is raining.

I think the first come, first served policy for the picnic tables and the TV seats is just fine. The track provides free seats and it is up to you to get there early enough to use them. But I somehow want to draw the line at the small park-like benches in the back of the clubhouse. I see these in the same light as the benches in your neighborhood park. You stop long enough to get off your feet and when you’ve had your rest you move on. But the custom at Saratoga is just like the picnic tables. First come puts a newspaper or something through the slats and the bench becomes theirs for the day. That means if they decide to wander down to the paddock, listen to one of the bands, watch a race from the rail and come back an hour later, the bench is expected to be open. If you happen to be wandering by and get a cramp, it’s up in the air whether you can sit down and massage it out.

There was one time when I was at the track with my mother and she just needed a rest so we sat on an open bench, fully expecting that whenever the owner returned we’d mosey along. The owner returned and was livid we actually sat on the Delaware section of the racing form he had used to mark his territory. I mean there was no, excuse me, but I’m sitting there. It was go ballistic first thing.

So I’m making a plea to Saratoga. Put signs on the benches that say, this bench cannot be reserved for the day. You can do the picnic table, the reserved grandstand seating, the Carousel, the plastic TV chairs, or your own lawn chair if you want a seat all day. That’s plenty  of guaranteed seating. But let the benches be like park benches. Available when someone physically isn’t sitting in them and used just to grab a quick rest.

I visited Monmouth Park this past Sunday. It’s a place I’ve enjoyed on many occasions. Unfortunately, Sunday turned out to be memorable for a different reason.

I had one personal irritation that turned out to be related to the larger issue. For some reason people were smoking both inside the plant and in the grandstand. At first I figured it was just a manifestation of the addictive grip smoking has, but then it occurred to me that this wasn’t just isolated behavior, it was a consistent reflection of the fact that track management wasn’t paying close attention to the fan experience. It wasn’t simply about people being inconsiderate, it was about nobody on either side caring enough to worry about it.

To be fair, as far as I can tell NJ law bans any indoor smoking, but doesn’t clamp down on outdoor smoking, so it would seem that the smoking in the outdoor grandstand was not banned, although to be precise outdoor in this case meant having a roof with no windows. Certainly there were no signs that would have indicated smoking was disallowed. There could have been no mistake that smoking inside was not allowed, and it appeared that the impunity of the scofflaws was a reflection of the fact that there wasn’t much of an employee presence throughout the facility.

The problem with smoking in the outdoor grandstand was twofold. Obviously if you were in the vicinity of the smokers, of which there were more than a few, you got your dose of second hand smoke. The other issue was that some of the windows in the indoor grandstand area were open and the smoke was just drifting in. It mostly seemed like a bad set-up if you wanted to sit outside and enjoy the ocean breezes without the acrid odor of cigarettes. I think to accommodate both sides Monmouth could have employed the Saratoga solution. You have to be outside of the physical plant to smoke, and there are plenty of open areas front and back.

I did mention it on twitter while I was there, and to his credit Travis Stone, Monmouth’s track announcer, did acknowledge my tweet and said he would pass my concern along. Nothing changed, but by that time I  figured I needed to focus on betting the races and stop worrying about things beyond my control. They weren’t going to fix the smaller problem or the bigger problem in an hour.

What I realized was that most of my disappointments that day were part of a larger problem that was not simply endemic to Monmouth.  On a day when the weather could hardly have been nicer, the beaches in Monmouth County were packed but the track looked positively ghostly.

Monmouth Park at one time was a jewel of a track, and during the summer the weekends were packed with racegoers. What has happened to Monmouth is happening at tracks all over the country. Attendance is down, handle is way down. Purses are declining. Same story as every other track. Saratoga is probably more immune than most places, but even the historic Spa is feeling the effects of a sport that is in decline. The impacts at Monmouth are obvious. Management finally dropped purses on Friday. The fields were fairly short on Sunday. Four races had 6 horses, four had 7, one had 8, one had 9 and one had 11. Two thirds of the races had 7 or fewer horses. They listed the attendance as 9,327. I can’t say with absolute certainty that number was inflated, but based on my wandering around the grounds, I would never have guessed half that number. Where i was betting there was never a line at the betting machines or the teller windows.

i wouldn’t say the place had slid horribly downhill physically, but it felt like I was going to work instead of for a day at the track. The place was almost funereal. There was no vibe, no buzz throughout the track. Large sections of the track were empty. There was a band playing in the back of the house to an audience of three,

I paid for the clubhouse admission, but was surprised to find out a lot of the outdoor grandstand seats on the clubhouse side had been taken out. I sent a query to the track asking about that, but never received a reply. The seats that remained in the clubhouse part of the grandstand were sparsely populated  because they were being sold for $2. It’s amazing how the price of one bet can deter anyone, but it does. If you wanted to watch a race seated in the grandstand, you either had to pay for a seat or go over to the general admission side. Of course, compared to Saratoga that isn’t so bad – there are no free seats there, unless you count the numerous benches in the clubhouse where people slap a newspaper through the slats and claim it as their own. But that is another rant for another day.

Travis Stone, the track announcer was a high point. Very professional, and I don’t think anyone could fairly say he was a downgrade from Larry Collmus. The plant and the grounds were relatively clean. The food has never been great at Monmouth, so there is nothing to gripe about there, and if you wanted something to eat or drink you at least didn’t have to stand in a long line.

The state of Monmouth was not unique. More and more tracks are feeling too large for the crowds that actually show up, but Monmouth was always a jewel of a track, not quite Saratoga but better than a lot of the summer tracks. It is now in a long line of tracks that are suffering, and there seems to be few solutions beyond some form of slot machines. We all know that is really not a long term answer.

The first step on the long road to decline is apathy. Whether it is related to the obviously detestable things like the track take or the less tangible things like unenthusiastic customer relations, failure starts with the absence of passion. Monmouth is not the problem. Monmouth is the result of the same years of poor management and promotion that occur everywhere. It is what happens when people look at their weekend and decide baking on the beach sounds like a better idea than heading to the track. It is what happens when everyone in the chain, from the head of management to the $2 punter just stop caring. Eventually Monmouth will start to show the obvious physical signs. Lighting going out, paint peeling, floors not being swept clean. If a track with a desirable location and no competition from the NY City area tracks for six weeks is struggling, the future is bleak indeed.

When I am home in Colorado I have lately been acting as the racing analyst at Arapahoe Park. It’s sort of a combination of Andy Sperling and Maggie Wolfendale. I get to stand in the paddock and talk about the horses, including my perceptions of their physical appearance. I’ve done my share of soothsaying about the horses for a lot of years and I’ve studied conformation and appearance. I’m better than the average racegoer when it comes to assessing a horse’s looks, but I’m nowhere near Maggie Wolfendale’s league. She’s positively an alchemist when it comes to turning looks into gold.

In the 8th race at Saratoga today I’m feeling good about my pick-4 after the 11 horse in the 7th race  can’t go slow enough in the stretch to not pass the 9. I’ve got the horse I think is the speed, Joe’s Blazing Aaron, the big back class horse Battle Force, and two of the pressing closers, Middleburg and Upgrade. If I’m worried about anything it’s Silver Freak pushing Joe’s Blazing Aaron. Sperling turns it over to Maggie and she is absolutely glowing about Silver Freak. Nice muscling, keyed up. And I don’t have a ticket with the 2 on it.

I admit it. I go up and single the 2 with the four horses I’m using in the 9th and the 3 I am using in the 10th. $12 pick-3 to cover myself. Silver Freak takes the lead, Joe’s Blazing Aaron tracks in second. Middleburg makes a mild closing bid, but Silver Freak essentially finds another gear and wins for fun.

Naturally I hit the 9th and 10th and had half of a $290 pick-3 to console myself.

I know how hard her job is and I’m giving her all the credit in the world. She does her job extraordinarily well. She doesn’t tout horses, she just reports what she sees. She gets the greatest compliments she can get from a handicapper. She has influence and she changes the tote board. I hope NYRA realizes what an amazing job she does.

The no raceday medication movement is gaining momentum. It has a far stronger feel than in years past. I don’t think this issue will be fully resolved for a while, but some of racing’s elite trainers have concluded it is necessary for the health of the sport.

D. Wayne Lukas, now in the category of elder statesman, and Todd Pletcher have been the trainers the media has gone to for quotes on the Lasix-banning side while Snidely…I mean Rick Violette is adamant about keeping it as a raceday medication.

Lukas and Pletcher are part of a group of 25 prominent trainers, including Shug McGaughey, Richard Mandella and Bill Mott, who had already pledged to keep their two year olds off Lasix and want to make that the standard in racing starting in 2015. Nick Zito said he wasn’t asked to sign but did support the ban.

Violette is backed up by a number of the humid climate trainers in Florida and New York. Violette said,

“The position of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association has not wavered. The science has not changed. The horses have not changed. Most horses suffer from exercise induced pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH), and Lasix is the only scientifically proven, truly effective treatment we have to protect them. A Lasix ban does not benefit the horse, the owner or the horseplayer. Forcing trainers to return to using archaic methods to treat bleeders, whether it is the barbaric practice of taking away water for 24 to 48 hours or trying homeopathic remedies with questionable results, is not progress. Absent a researched and reasoned alternative to protect horses from EIPH, NYTHA is vehemently against any ban on Lasix.” 

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of gray area. One side says ban drugs, the other side says there is no alternative that isn’t barbaric. I’m not sure either side is ready to compromise, but I’m going to offer my solution.

Those who favor the drug ban not only cite the obvious reason – according to the public “drugs are drugs” and there is always a perception that Lasix is performance enhancing – but also suggest Lasix is the reason horses race about half as often as they did 50 years ago. The argument is that the need for horses to recover from the effects of Lasix only allows them to run six instead of 10-12 times a year. Naturally, owners have to pay trainer and vet bills the whole year. The fewer times a horse runs, the less often it has a chance to catch a purse.

It is also the case that the number of owners has been steadily decreasing. It makes a lot of sense that the ratio of expenses to purses won could be a major contributing factor.

So whether we are talking about potential real problems such as performance enhancement, using Lasix to mask other drugs or how long it takes to recover from the use of diuertics, or perceived problems by the racing public, banning Lasix sounds like a no brainer to those of us limited to betting on horses.

The other question is, how many horses bleed so severely that Lasix is an absolute necessity to keep them racing? There is debate, but the evidence leans toward only a small percentage of horses being serious bleeders. If you are one of the big time trainers, having to retire a chronic bleeder isn’t such a big deal. But if your stable consists of a few claiming runners, the idea of retiring a potential earner is a much tougher decision.

Even Major League Baseball allows synthetic testosterone injections if they are deemed a medical necessity as we found out in the case of Alex Rodriguez. Even if a state requires vet certification before authorizing the use of Lasix, we know that most horses bleed, although not seriously. It’s news if a horse doesn’t get certified for Lasix.

The major difficulty with the discussion at the moment is that it seems to be primarily New York based trainers against other New York based trainers. The rest of the country is apparently just expected to fall in line.

I’ve argued for a national racing commission that would establish consistent rules for the sport, including drugs. But even that commission should take into account there is more than just 1,600 miles between Saratoga and Arapahoe Park. There has to be the equivalent of the major leagues and minor leagues, and the rules have to be slightly more lenient at the minor league tracks. For the sake of argument, let’s divide tracks into A, B, C and D. A tracks would be places like Belmont, Saratoga, Santa Anita, Churchill, Arlington, Del Mar and similar tracks that have multiple Grade 1 races at their meet. B tracks might include Sunland or Tampa or Turf Paradise, tracks that have some big races, but also have a lot of bottom level claimers. To be a B track, a turf course may also be required. C tracks would be all the other tracks, such as Arapahoe Park or Albuquerque. D tracks would be fair meets or places like Wyoming Downs.

I have a fairly simple proposal. Race day medication at A tracks would only be allowed for bleeders that could not race otherwise. The bar would be set very high,  applying to only the most serious bleeders, maybe 2-5% of all runners. If necessary, purses would be supplemented by the commission to ensure enough horses are on the grounds to have full fields.

At B tracks, in addition to certified serious bleeders, Lasix would only be allowed in claiming races below a certain threshold. This means trainers who want to use Lasix might have to risk losing their charges. Horses below the threshold claiming level winning without Lasix would be eligible for a purse bonus. Same for horses that forego Lasix at C tracks.

At C tracks, Lasix would be allowed for all but stakes races.

At D tracks Lasix would be allowed for all horses at all levels.

This system ensures that at the highest levels most of the runners are Lasix free, but it allows racing to continue at the smaller venues. Trainers who want to use Lasix always have places they can race. I think it would even be fine to become more restrictive with Lasix at the B and C tracks over a period of years.

I’m not going to worry about how a track becomes A – D. We all know which tracks are A for sure and C for sure. It then becomes a process of segmenting the remaining tracks. The good thing is that if a track thinks they are a B instead of a C, they would have to adhere to the B level rules.

I could go into a lot more detail, but you get the idea. We recognize the spectrum of tracks that exist and we provide incentives for not using race day medication.

How about helping fill out this idea?