Originally Posted by oracle80
Misinformation?
You say its headed in the right direction?
I have a few questions for you then.
1) Are the purses there not embarassingly small given the type of horses who winter there(like the ones YOU cited) and the fact that there is a huge horse population to draw from?
2) Are the weekday cards not an absolute disgrace containing nothing but cheap claimers and maiden claimers(as cited by trainers last year including Frankel when they went to management to complain about it)?
3) Was the refurbishment of Gulfstream Park not incredibly stupid and undertaken with no foresight as the mile and an eigth dirt races give an unfair advantage to the inside pp's causing trainers to scratch horses out of these races when drawing the outside?
Was it not also incredibly stupid to refurbish the oval leaving horseman without the possibility of running mile and a sixteenth two turn dirt races, something that Zito, Pletcher, etc complained about citing how vital they are for three year olds starting their tri crown campaigns who are not ready to go a mile and an eighth of the layoff yet need two turn seasoning?
As a South Florida local who goes to GP 10-12x per year for the past 15 years I agree with all of the above statements. I would temper the comments above with the following:
*Outside of a few meets (such as Saratoga) most weekday cards at most tracks are a joke (including Del Mar, Santa Anita, Aqueduct and even the old GP had horrible mid week cards with a minor stake stuck in the middle 1x per mid week).
*I personally am not an owner so I don't care what the purse structure is. I am guessing that whether an allowance race last year was for $33K or $50K I still would have seen Bernadini vs Exclusive Quality (believe this is the Pletcher's horse name) in a NW1 at Gulf last year. I don't care what the purse of the allowance race was. That being said it sure would be nice to see more 3 year old maiden allowance and Nx1 races each day (instead of 3-4every other Saturday) and I believe slots will enable this.
*I believe that if (yes Bush may still try to kill this deal) slots are installed purses will significantly increase (I have heard numbers similar to the posted article on this string). For now we are all just speculating so there is no reason to point fingers until we see what happens.
*I know this string started with Pletcher going west, but there have been plenty of West Coast trainers heading (or remaining) East (more than East Coast trainers heading West) for the GP meet for stall space in advance of the purse hikes (all the more reason that it will happen and be significant). Wesley Ward and Mike Mitchell moving their tacks for the meet and Harty / Frankel staying East despire having the ability to move those horses back west. Granted a lack of claiming horse quality out West is part of the reason as well.
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