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Originally Posted by freddymo
Everything you say is fair..I hope I never have to race at River Downs. I think racing there and taking full advantage of the insanity doesn't mitigate that slots aren't the answer and shouldn't be looked at as the foundation that racing needs to grow upon. I am hoping to steal as much money as I can with a filly or two that simply will be rewarded for there birth place and not their ability.. Plus Handle the important variant in racing will not be advanced in anyway shape or form from PID, especially considering the purse involved.
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For me, and I'm a Mid-Atlantic guy, the whole thing started with Delpark and Charles Town getting slots. It wasn't as much a racing thing as it was a state racetrack thing. MD was kicking Delpark's and CT's ass. Those two tracks couldn't compete and were virtually on death's door. If not for their state's legislators deciding that racing, breeding, etc were important enough to their state economy, racing would not exist at Delpark and CT.
But when their gov't became involved, it unleveled the playing field. We, in MD, lost horsemen, horses and jocks (Dominguez, Pino, etc) to Delpark and others to CT.
As things worsened in MD, I began relying on the insane purses at CT and Delpark to keep my partnerships solvent. Was the business model CT employed where I could run my $5k claimer for $23k purse a wonderful thing? No, it was stupid. But 2 wins at CT in the summer made enough money for my group to ensure that we could survive the rest of the year.
We had the opportunity to vote for/against slots in MD this past Nov. Understand that as much as I hate slots, the fact was that in order to compete, MD has to have the same business tools that CT and Delpark, and now Philly/PennNat have. And, currently, KY needs the same as Indiana has. While it seems pretty pathetic to even mention Indiana racing in the same breath as KY racing, the reality is KY needs to level the playing field that slots will allow.
In a perfect racing world, slots would not be part of any track's equation. The upset of the apple cart, in the Mid-Atlantic, was when the lesser tracks received the golden goose of slots.
It appears to me that, in your racing Utopia, there'd only be stakes races. But the reality is no one wants to run two races a day, twice a week. As the good Dr. pointed out, without the benefit of a timer or designation of a class level, most of us wouldn't know the difference between 4 horses in a
$5k claimer spread across the track at the wire running 6f in 1:13 vs. 4 spread running in a Grade II going 6f in 1:09. It's all about the competition no matter the level and whether you've got the horse to win at that level.