We all have to come to grips with the continuous slide of horseracing as a sport.

While it would be absurd to think horseracing will ever return to its past glory, passionate fans remain perplexed about why the news always seems to be bad. The latest blow came in the form of the announcement that Suffolk Downs, a track that had been around since 1935, was shutting its doors at the end of the racing season.

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission gave the sole Boston-area casino license to Wynn Resorts instead of to Mohegan Sun and its partner Suffolk Downs. Had Mohegan Sun been given the license, it would have agreed to  keep live horseracing for at least another 15 years and put $40 million into improvements at the racing facility. Instead, they gave it to Wynn, a company that made  no commitment to horseracing.

In an almost puzzling statement, the Gaming Commission said it was “fully committed to an extensive and sustained exploration of every available option that may preserve the long tradition of Thoroughbred racing in the commonwealth.” The easiest option was giving the license to Mohegan Sun, and in the convoluted world of statements made by public officials, the offer to explore every option AFTER basically killing the track rings disingenuous.

The mistakes made by the racing industry have been myriad, going as far back as the fifties when track managers thought televising horse racing would keep people from actually showing up at the track. The industry has been slow to embrace technology and keep pace with the evolution of modern sports fans. Critically, they let themselves be classified not as a sport like football or basketball, but as a gambling activity, equivalent to slot machines or craps tables.

When the Massachusetts Commission killed Suffolk, they were making a purely bottom line decision. They weren’t killing a sport – they were trading one gambling activity for another that would make the state far more money. They didn’t see themselves as taking something away from racing fans as much as they saw something akin to replacing cowboy boots with penny loafers. Hey, they’re both shoes, right? What’s the big deal unless you happen to be on a ranch instead of a downtown office building?

The demise of Suffolk is only worth mourning as a symbol of what is to come. Let’s face it. Suffolk was not a unique architectural triumph. It was built in 62 days for $2 million and with that kind of time and money you couldn’t expect much gingerbreading. It had the ambience of a factory, and lest you think I’m picking on Suffolk, I can name half a dozen tracks with the same atmosphere. Who would want to go there other than the hard core racing fan?

The aesthetic part could have been fixed with enough care and money. What a facelift couldn’t accomplish was to change attitudes toward horseracing as a real and viable sport and not just a different outlet for people who play eeny-meeny-miney-mo with their gambling dollar. We might know the lottery or a slot machine is not the same thing as a live race, but apparently most of the rest of public doesn’t share that opinion.

This is a fact. Too many racetracks were built when 15,000 people would show up on a Saturday. With modern simulcasting, the only time you need to show up is when the state you are in won’t let you bet your hometown track on line. I live in Colorado where you can’t bet Arapahoe Park on line, and unless I see a coup unfolding, I’m content to sit at home and play Saratoga or Del Mar. I can also say of the people I know who are serious horse players living in CO, most of them go to Arapahoe Park maybe once a year. Arapahoe has a large plant to maintain, and there simply aren’t people filling it. Ever been to Aqueduct on a weekday in January? You could drop dead and might not get noticed. In all candor, even if someone wanted to save Suffolk, the reality was a facelift was no more the answer than putting a mask on the Phantom of the Opera. They needed to tear the facility down, build something a lot smaller, and make it a lot more fan friendly. How about a destination restaurant? How about tables like you see at a simulcast facility with individual TVs and betting terminals for everyone?

There is a part of me that believes that the closure of tracks like Suffolk is a good thing. We all agree the racing product has become diluted and six or seven horse cards the norm. The number of foals being born is down significantly, the average starts per horse are about half what they were 40 years ago, and racing is more and more looking like a reflection of society – the rich get richer, the poor stay poor and the middle class is losing ground every year. Owner-trainers, small time owners, and small time stables are slowly disappearing. If racing could guarantee us good horses and full fields in exchange for closing some tracks, we’d probably be satisfied.

Racing cannot compete with casinos from a revenue perspective and it is a mistake to try. Running a race meet costs many times what it takes to run a casino, and always produces less revenue. Instead, race tracks compete with each other like sharks looking to grab a share of a wounded fish. Do you think Churchill Downs would ever be willing to share revenue from Oaks/Derby days simply because they have the historical advantage and a brilliant marketing campaign to turn a mad 20-horse three year old race into a national event? Of course not. It’s their money, or at least the part that isn’t diverted to the State of Kentucky. Can you imagine Seattle and Denver saying to football, we’ll take all the Super Bowl revenue because we’re playing?

I’ve said it before and I won’t dwell on the point, but racing can only be better served by having a national governing body and getting the greedy states out of the picture. It’s amazing the things that fans complain about daily – races at tracks going off simultaneously, no HD signal, takeout rates that border on price gouging – and there is no governing body that can do something about the issues. Years go by, and the complaints stay the same. Either that tells you no one is listening or no one cares.

Racing is the most poorly marketed sport in the country. Has racing tapped the video game market? And look at the bright side of that – horses won’t sue a gaming company for using their likenesses. For goodness sake we have games about angry birds making millions. How hard can it be to do something with charging horses? Is it as easy as it should be to bet from home? If they are addressing the use of race day medications, it is on a piecemeal basis. Have they even considered the issues associated with the betting whales? Most of us are left with the sour, if ridiculous, opinion that racing commissions and track management are somewhere between clueless and heartless.

A small base of loyal Suffolk fans will miss live racing there. The rest of us will just keep complaining mostly to no avail.

I’ve gone through an evolution when it comes to people who have an emotional sort of attachment to a horse in the same way fans have attachments to sports teams.

When I first started over 40 years ago, my mentors were adamant that you cannot develop “feelings” with regard to any horse. That worked both ways – you could no more dislike a horse than like a horse – because it could affect your betting. You job was to be dispassionate, make the right bet, and try to make money. You couldn’t “love” California Chrome nor “hate” him. He was either a likely winner at good value or not. That was the equation. And people who thought differently were just not on the correct plane.

A horse would break down – it was just part of the game. A well-known horse dies suddenly – that’s too bad but I’ve got races to handicap. It was in part the generation, and in part the expectation about horseplayers as unemotional and cynical.

Over time I changed my opinion, mostly because I realized that the success of a sport has a lot to do with people having a rooting interest beyond any single event. People follow football for a lot of reasons, but everyone has a team they root for and a favorite player or two on that team. Can you imagine if everyone rooted solely based on which team they bet? I like the Broncos because I bet on them against the Chiefs, but next week I might not care about the Broncos, and instead I’ll root for the Seahawks because they are my bet. Most of the ardent fans could care less about the point spread as long as their team wins.

On a Sunday in Denver the town is full of people wearing Peyton Manning jerseys. The newspapers and TV stations give the Broncos more coverage than any other story. As soon as the game is over the Broncos are the lead news story and TV stations are in the locker room asking the most inane and unnecessary questions. “How big did you think it was to intercept that pass with two seconds left and preserve the Bronco’s one point victory?” Don’t you think the question actually answers the question? Last February one of the news stations actually interrupted coverage of a live NHL game late in the third period just to show the Broncos deplaning in NJ where the Super Bowl would be played. The world stopped so we could see a group of very large men walk down the gangway. Now that is team loyalty.

It was then that I realized that horseracing, just as much as any other sport, needs stars much like football, basketball or baseball. When Dance With Fate, winner of this year’s Bluegrass Stakes, passed away suddenly, the Twitterverse was awash with sadness and sentiment. And this was just a somewhat minor three year old stakes horse. I thought that was great. The sport can only flourish with people who feel passionate about the participants.

You ever listen to sports talk radio? Opinions are myriad and the arguments ceaseless. California Chrome fans passionately believed in the horse, and when he lost the Belmont the emotion came pouring out. This is where my opinion has evolved. If loving a horse gets someone involved in the game, great. Yeah, we need people really betting on the races, but first we need to get them to care about the sport.

Of course horseracing has an inherent problem when it comes to building a fan base centered on rooting for specific horses. The really good horses have short careers. Secretariat never made it past his three year old season. Any fully functional stallion is the exception if he makes it to his five year old season. LeBron James, Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning all have longevity and the opportunity to build a fan base. But having a fan base beyond the betting aspect is critical to the future success of horseracing.

My first thought on promoting a broader fan base is to take a page out of the big three sports – the fantasy league.There are virtual stables out there, but they are not heavily promoted and they certainly are not well-used as a marketing tool. Fantasy leagues with daily and weekly contests would assuredly develop a fan base. The NFL is currently three days a week, five months out of the year. Horseracing is pretty much a 365 day sport. This gives the sport visibility beyond getting to bet a race.

I totally understand that if you are betting pari-mutuelly you have to look for the horse you think is the likeliest winner and determine if it has value. The idea of a fantasy league has to supplement the individual race betting aspect without replacing it.

Horseracing has a lot of problems, not the least of which that too many people care too little about the runners themselves. That is one of the things that has to change if we expect there to be a healthy, flourishing sport  in the future.

The first race at Belmont on Sunday September 7 was a bottom level claiming event. I was really sold on an exacta of the 5, Wild Kay, and the 4, Inaflash. Inaflash had been on the sidelines since May 15, acquiring a new trainer since that date. He also was listed as wearing one bar shoe.

There was some interesting conversation on Twitter regarding Inaflash and his bar shoe, to the point where  some players had some hesitation about using Inaflash. And that was the real issue. None of us knew exactly why he was wearing the bar shoe, and we were forced to bet (or not bet) based on our assessment of the layoff and the bar shoe.

Inaflash won the race with Wild Kay second, triggering a $40 exacta in a race where it didn’t look, at least to me, like the finish could have been anything other than those two horses. Even though I hit the race, I probably underbet it because of concern about the bar shoe. What I needed to know was

• Why did Inaflash take a 4-month vacation? Was he injured? Just needed a rest?
• Why was the trainer adding a bar shoe?
• If he had an injury, could we be sure it was fully healed?

Perhaps it was good handicapping, or perhaps it was good luck, but after the race I thought there really shouldn’t have been a need for me to guess about the trainer’s intentions or the actual condition of the horse. I shouldn’t have had to wonder whether I should be worried about the bar shoe. There should have been an information source that told me why the horse had been laid up for four months and what the condition of his foot was.

What I would propose is that DRF or BrisNet should have an easily accessed data base that has trainer comments for any horse that has been away from the races for more than 90 days, and to be clear, the trainer should be required to comment on any layoff of that length or longer. It should be a simple matter for the trainer to state why the horse had been laid up. It should note any surgeries, including gelding the horse. It should include information on whether a filly or mare foaled during the time off. It should explain any injuries the horse had sustained and the status of treatment.

I’m not talking about long paragraphs. Something like this.

Inaflash

• Injured his right front foot, was treated and the foot is fully healed. We are adding a bar shoe today to protect the foot.

No trainer is going to keep a healthy horse on the farm. Of course Inaflash had some sort of injury, but the handicapper didn’t know exactly what it was or how serious it was.

Training a horse is different today than it was 50 years ago. Back then trainers raced horses into condition. In fact most handicapping “systems” started out with the first rule being, eliminate any horse who has been away from the races 30 days or longer. Given that trainers are so much more adept at getting horses ready to race off works, long layoffs between races are more and more common. We need to know if the layoff is because of illness, surgery, injury or just some necessary time away from the races.

With Tom Durkin announcing he is retiring after Saratoga, the outpouring of saddness and affection has been overwhelming. There was a time when the argument over who was the best race caller pitted Trevor Denman against Tom Durkin. For quite a while now the argument has been settled in Durkin’s favor.

Durkin admitted he was not sentimental about his craft. When asked what his job was, he said it was simply to describe what was happening during a race. That so understates what the race caller does. He paints a picture that even a blind man could see. At their best, they are poetic. They are excited when the crowd is excited, and if they are not pumped up, the race caller gets them involved. They are funny when the time is right. They tell us the somber news when a horse breaks down, and they do it in a professional way. They amplify a magnificent performance, letting the crowd know that they are witnessing something special. Their calls of great races stay in our memory. Fred Caposella calling Jaipur and Ridan in the 1962 Travers. Durkin calling Flanders and Serena’s Song in the 1994 Breeder’s Cup. Chick Anderson calling the great Secretariat the 1973 Belmont. The list goes on and on.

The best race callers define racegoing for a generation. When Fred Caposella retired, people in my father’s generation lamented they would never see another like him. Much the same has been the reaction to Durkin leaving.

The great race callers add to the lexicon of racing. “And down the stretch they come” from Dave Johnson. “Moving like a winner” from Trevor Denman. “Here they come spinning out of the turn” from Durkin’s model, Phil Georgeff.

I have to tell this story that involved Marshall Cassidy, the NYRA race caller Durkin succeeded. If you ever heard Cassidy call a race, he had the diction of a Shakespearean actor, but never varied he tone much during a race. We never questioned his accuracy, but he wasn’t known for his blood pumping calls. On an otherwise non-memorable weekday, a bunch of regulars were milling around the OTB in Amsterdam.  As I remember, at that time all we got was an audio of the race call on delay. Cassidy is doing his normal straightforward call, when a horse named What a Wabbit takes the lead. When Cassidy comes out with, What a Wabbit on the wail, the entire place cracked up. None of us could ever remember Cassidy even being remotely humorous.

Durkin turned the start of a race into his signature, “Annnnd, they’re off.” He knew precisely when it was safe to be funny. Everybody recognizes his calls of Arggghhhh or Doremifasollatido. In his impossible call of Yakahickamickadola he was really making fun of his own inability to get the name out of his mouth correctly. Everyone laughed and no one took it the wrong way. He paid tribute to the great Keith Jackson in his call of Whoa Nellie. Ready’s Echo coming from “another county” to finish second in a maiden race. He expressed the frustration of everyone watching a race in the fog at Aqueduct when he said, “wish I could see it.” He even knew when not say anything as he did when Commentator won a race by a city block.

Tom Durkin was not just good at his job. He was as good as anyone who has ever done that job.

Larry Collmus said it best when he noted he was not replacing Durkin, merely succeeding him.

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?

After the horse Seriously (previously named Lararus) went down the other day, Del Mar predictably took races off the turf again. Apparently the plan is to be back on the turf next Friday, but to limit the races to higher level ALW and Stakes.

I’m going to make this short. We need to know what is different about the turf course this year that could possibly explain why there seems to be a rash of serious injuries.

I know they expanded the turf course this year in order to compete for the Breeder’s Cup, and perhaps it just hasn’t matured completely. But I don’t know, and if they’ve announced what the issue is, it hasn’t been in a way that makes it clear to the betting public. Of course, in addition to doing some maintenance on the turf course, they moved the rail out. I guess all that didn’t work.

It simply isn’t enough to take the races off the turf. We need a tangible explanation that either puts the blame on the turf course or comes up with a better explanation. When the races go back on the turf, we need an assurance that the turf course is as safe as a turf course can be.

Enough is enough. Del Mar needs to get the problem fixed and they need to be totally transparent with the betting public. There is simply no other course of action.