Quote:
Originally Posted by Calzone Lord
In the good old days of horse racing in America... the major racetracks would bar the entry of horses who bled:
The rules would look like this:
Going one step further -- they could also suspend horses who have "raced inconsistently" for no other reason at all.
This is when the racing associations actually had power.
The idea was to protect the bettor and the image of the sport.
Politicians never got involved with anything. It was simply a matter of the individual racing associations doing what they felt was in the best interest of the bettors and the overall image of the sport.
This topic hasn't helped the image of the sport (NY Times coverage) and no one with even a morsel of power in this industry ever asks or cares to ask 'what is in the best interest of the bettor?' |
This was still pretty much the case up until the 80's when people started taking to the courts to dispute stewards rulings and other matters. Politicians didnt bother much with racing because there wasn't much money at stake for them and when they did have anything to do with the track it was getting some free publicity handing out the Preakness trophy or something like that.
Your last sentence is completely correct and what the naysayers on Paulick and the high profile people who continue to harp on lasix and use that topic to drag the sport down dont seem to understand is that the negative image that they are portraying wont change if and when lasix is banned. As I have said so many times before for the vast majority of people it wont mean anything but an L missing in the program. There is no bump in handle or horse ownership coming from a raceday lasix ban and not a single person who disagrees with this has provided a single shred of evidence that supports their position. The irony of Lincoln Collins giving his position is that his entire message is more or less using a ban on lasix to try to protect the international status of American BRED horses so that the sales market can continue to be propped up with foreign money. That the bloodstock market and the advisors in Lexington, KY have more or less ruined the "sport" at the top of the game by selling so many of our top pedigrees to foreign interests, prematurely retiring our best horses, railed against handicap racing to the point where our formerly most important races are a shell of themselves, advising clients to send horses only to supertrainers in hopes to curry favor from them when selling horses to their clients, etc. The ultimate irony is that they have used the lasix argument to curry pretty horse PR, rally PETA types against us, encourage Joe Drape and company to continue to lob potshots at us, prodded politicians to threaten us and the real goal of the cause is to protect the very thing that has probably hurt the racing game as much as anything at least in the publics eyes, the breeding/broodmare/yearling sales market.