NYRA has an opportunity to change the system so to speak because the amount of purse money that they are going to have will put them far ahead of every other track in the country. Yet because tracks (not just NYRA) have ceded control of their racing programs to a few large outfits what will almost assuredly happen is they will simply throw money at bad horses, have some astronomically high stakes purses, and continue business as usual.
What they should do is raise the bottom claiming price, get rid of condition claiming races past the nw2 condition, reinstitute starter handicaps, structure the open claiming races so thatthere is more incentive to raise your horse in price than the simple claim and dump which is happening now. In addition they should rein in the large stables by instituting a strict stall limit on NYRA grounds of 80 stalls regardless of what track they are located at. Make owners make a choice instead of just continously sending all the horses to the few outfits which horde them. If Pletcher can convince an owner that his horse should be racing at Delaware in a 37k MSW than in Saratoga for an 80k maiden then god bless them both. But if the horses were distributed among a greater variety of trainers you would see an increase in field size and quality in your better races simply from horses that were already training there.
Obviously in NY you have NY breds to deal with but they can be used to supplement the cards instead of dominating them if you clean up the glut of cheap races and spread the horses around. I'd rather see a stronger state breeding program and NYbred allowance races than a steady parade of conditioned 7500's. This of course simplifies the situation and there are a number of things that need to be dealt with, the backlash from the 5 or 6 trainers that would be affected but PA racing and Louisiana racing is a perfect example of how just throwing money at the same horses in the same basic structure is a waste of money.
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