“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently…We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist and essayist who spent his life in critical opposition to social injustice and totalitarianism. He is probably most remembered for his dystopian 1949 novel, 1984, written under the pen name George Orwell. He wrote the book in the elongating shadow of a post-World War II Europe that had seen the meteoric rise and fall of fascism and the burgeoning threat of a communist Soviet Union controlled by Big Brother himself, Josef Stalin.
The frightening theme that weaves throughout the book is censorship, the endless doctoring of photographs and the erasure of “unpersons,” so that no record of their existence remains.
In a move that at least provides a whiff of 1984, NYRA has decided that the video replay for the 8th race on Friday December 5 will be forever deleted from the archives, or as Orwell may have put it,
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
In a Daily Racing Form article, David Grening described the incident this way:
“Friday’s incident occurred when Quick Money, ridden by Angel Serpa, clipped heels after American Creed, ridden by Manuel Franco, drifted in and Sol the Freud, ridden by C.C. Lopez, came out, closing what was a narrow hole. Quick Money went down, and Laila’s Jazz fell over him. Half Nelson, ridden by Israel Rodriguez, fell over Laila’s Jazz. Quick Money died as a result of the impact, which caused him to break his neck. Half Nelson was vanned off but shortly thereafter was euthanized due to a fractured shoulder. Laila’s Jazz got up and ran loose before being caught by an outrider and was not reported to have suffered a serious injury.”
It was an ugly scene to be sure, but the decision not to show the replay after the race, especially considering there was an inquiry, was – and there is no other way to put this – wrong. And the further decision to expunge the race from the NYRA video library only compounded the mistake. NYRA’s policy is not to show race replays where there is a death involved. They would like you to believe it is in the “best interest of the sport” to bury fatal accidents, but it stretches credibility to believe that argument. If that is, in fact, a reason, it can be no better than a minor part of the decision.
Someone suggested that the NYRA spokesperson was being politic, but offering it was in the best interest of the sport was as lame a non-answer as we could have imagined. Why is it in the best interest? Was it too violent for normal sensibility? Are we honoring the “memory” of the horses who perished, exhibiting some surreal sensitivity to the horses as we might to the families of the human victims of tragedies? NYRA seemed to either be acting imperially (the object of power is power after all) or assuming we were all incapable of objectively watching the video.
I’ll give you the likely reason. Between Joe Drape, PETA, Real Sports and the other groups making a living from sensationalizing race track accidents – and fatalities – the idea of handing them what seems like another bullet for their firearm can be seen as self-destructive. But the other sports that tried to keep their problems closeted learned the hard way that it has the opposite effect on public opinion. If you need an example, go no farther than Roger Goodell and Ray Rice. Put simply, if you act like you have something to hide, everyone concludes you have something to hide. Either that or you think you are beyond the effects of criticism, and even the exalted NFL found out how fast the worshippers can turn.
Horseracing is different than other sports because it is driven by the betting that occurs on each event. If NASCAR decided not to show horrific crashes fans might be disappointed, but it’s not a pari-mutuel sport where fans have the right to review the races they pay to watch. Football fans may look away when a vicious hit results in a stomach-turning injury, but unless the hit is illegal, it winds up being just a part of the game. There is not a sport played where injuries are not inherent, and sometimes repulsively ugly. Every fan understands and accepts that.
Yes, fans have an absolute right to view race replays, both to make their own assessment of the fairness of the outcome and as part of handicapping. There can be no argument about this. If we need to have a discussion it should be about how those of us with a need to make assessments can gain access while keeping those whose sensibilities would be offended from accidentally stumbling upon a video of a horse breaking its neck during a race. But at the end of the day, if someone wants to use the video to “prove” the cruel nature of horseracing we can’t stop it. All we can do is what every other sport does – demonstrate how we are proactively working to make the sport as safe as possible. If that is not what we are doing, then horseracing does not deserve to survive. Anything less than ensuring trainers who improperly care for their horses or put unsound animals on the track, jockeys who ride recklessly, veterinarians that do not provide absolute assurance of a horse’s ability to race safely, and maintenance supervisors who do not absolutely ensure the safety of the racing surface are separated from racing is unacceptable. THAT is how you fight against those who wish to bury racing.
NYRA is not acting in the public interest but their own. Or as Orwell put it,
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”