Caixa Eletronica

[parsixfarms]

Originally Posted by freddymo

To be fair, haven't you ever walked into a racing secretary's office and asked him or her to write a race a certain way that is beneficial for you and your owners.

This isn't about the racing office writing a race for a particular owner/trainer. It happens, and I don't have a problem with it. This is about how the NYRA racing office has uniformly interpreted the following "condition eligibility" provision in the fine print of the NYRA condition book:

CONDITION ELIGIBILITY
Preference by conditions beginning with graded stakes winners, open stakes winners within
the race condition providing they have finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th for $40,000 or more since
starting for less than $40,000 (New York Bred races $25,000).
Starter races for less than $20,000 will be considered claiming races for condition eligibility.

The language in question goes back to when Mike Lakow was the racing secretary and NYRA was running few, if any, starter allowance/handicaps. The purpose of the provision was that, in oversubscribed allowance races, horses that had run recently in either claiming or starter races would have last preference and often be relegated to the AE list. (Now, this most often impacts NY-bred NW1X allowance races.)

The issue as it relates to the starter races is that, when a horse runs in a starter for less than $20,000, the NYRA racing office has interpreted the condition eligibility provision (ostensibly aimed at establishing preference for allowance races) as if the horse actually ran for the tag less than $20,000. The bizarre result is that Caixa Electronica ran for $16,000 in May 2009; and that was the last time that he actually ran for a tag less than $62,500. However, because he ran in a $16,000 starter handicap in August 2010 and again in August 2011, he is treated the same as a horse that actually started for a $16,000 claiming tag in 2010 and 2011, even though he ran protected in both spots. By interpreting the provision this way, so long as the owner of the horse is smart enough to "re-qualify" his or her horse by running in a starter for less than $20,000, the horse will have perpetual eligibility for the condition, even though he could have never been claimed during the lookback period.