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#1
01-31-2014, 02:11 PM
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I have a lot of experience in racing. I worked as a groom as a kid in Saratoga before I was legal to work. Worked in the parking lot at night at Saratoga harness. I went to the U of AZ race track program. I spent 2 years as asst racing secretary at Yonkers. I have moonlighted charting races and punching tickets at various times. I worked for some of the top trainers in the US and have trained, owned and bred horses on my own since 1999. I have been thinking about how to fix the game for 25 years and sadly the more experience in different area's that I got, the more I realized that racing was essentially doomed. You will never get "racing" to act as a single entity despite the clamor for a commissioner or league office of sorts. There are few businesses in the world where so many different working parts work together while serving different masters with different goals in mind. Self interest is simply too strong of a human flaw to overcome. There are a lot of people who are making a lot of money as racing is currently constructed an despite an awareness that things NEED to change many feel they will just ride it out to the end squeezing every penny they can get before the end comes. There has been a sense of doom surrounding this business for 100 years if you read the old thoroughbred record news reports from the past so you have to understand that a lot of racing people continue to see it as crying wolf even as Hollywood Park closes and Bay Meadows closes and we have Penn National gaming building "tracks" with zero live mutual clerks. The Feds carted off a couple of trainers on trumped up charges of race fixing yet miracle workers in other area's are still working magic. This is a vision less industry with short term considerations a virtual given. I see exchage wagering as a potential revelation of sorts but the industry will surely screw it up. At the very least Monmouth has a few guys willing to try different things like sports betting and exchange wagering. Though I suppose once sports betting gets humming the state will surely take it away like they do with slots money right? I guess when it comes right down to it I know far too may of the industry movers and shakers to have any confidence that they can solve virtually any mundane issue let alone a massive overhaul. I'm old enough to ride it out till the end but anyone who is young and interested in the sport, go to Pat Cummings for advice because the game in this country is in far worse shape than most even realize. 
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#3
01-31-2014, 10:08 PM
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1. Most horses are born with the instinct to run and compete, no matter where they are born. 2. All horses eat, drink, excrete, sleep, etc. Almost every horse the world over has an owner, and if it is in their interest to keep the horse (for whatever reason), they have to spend resources to maintain the horse. THIS is a massive, and (especially amongst some) wildly under-recognized economic driver. Keep it in mind. 3. Philly.com did a hit piece on racing a few months back, which seems just a prelude to this recent attack. I call it a hit piece because it was, pure and simple. It suggested, and I am not stretching the suggestion, that old ladies were spending their social security checks through penny slots to enrich Saudi princes, and financiers like George Bolton/Paul Reddam, etc, and that was wrong. 4. Here's the original story, from September. It's almost as if this most recent effort to raid racing's "coffers" is a function of someone reading this story. More likely, I'd suggest, it's all part of the same campaign. Read it here - http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Gi..._industry.html 5. It was (and remains) economic sensationalism at its worst, framing the entire industry around the person who owns the horse, with absolutely no reference to the fact that this is the person who also pays the bills, and that trickle down is substantial. The more horses you have, the wider your reach, the MORE people who are paid (read also - the more economic stimulus the sport, essentially the horse, provides to society). 6. Watch this video, the whole thing isn't required, from 2:00 to 4:00. This is Mick Goss, a phenomenal fellow who runs Summerhill Stud in South Africa. Never in my history in the sport have I encountered someone who captured the trickle-down economics of racing any better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuwH19fQOCI "I've always been amazed by the tenacity of our horsemen. We have colleagues who have been known to mortgage their farms in order to pay their stallion fees... "If racing were simply commerce, Karl Marx should have been its interpreter. As a financial proposition, it is about the redistribution of incomes. It is socialism in a form so subtle you'd hardly notice it. Hundreds of millions of rands (South African $$) are supplied each year by businessmen from Massachusetts to Mooi River, from surgeons and solicitors, gold miners to merchant bankers, and tax avoiders from all over. The treasure they contribute is then redistributed slowly, little by little each month so it doesn't look too obvious. To jockeys, trainers, vets and farriers, to clairvoyants, chiropractors, and grooms, to bottlers of magic elixirs, feed merchants and float drivers. Eventually, the working class has acquired most of the surplus income of the bourgeois. When the cycle begins, the horsepeople provide the experience, the owners the cash. When the cycle is complete, the horsepeople have the cash, and the owners have the experience." 7. If the Rep. thinks the sport exists to enrich those who already are a little more, he needs an economics lesson. How good is racing's rebuttal to all of this? We'll see. 8. If anyone wants a look at what racing could become without competitive assistance racinos have provided, take a good look at the purse structure in the UK. To suggest it's terrible is an understatement. Racing in the UK is almost exclusively in the domain of the incredibly wealthy, because there is almost no way to make money. Ryan Goldberg did a great story on this for the International Herald Tribune last year. US racing has done a phenomenal job of making the game significantly affordable for more than just the uber elite. That's all I have for now. Last edited by PatCummings : 01-31-2014 at 10:21 PM.
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#4
02-04-2014, 08:28 AM
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Governor Tom Corbett is supposed to address increasing spending on education in Pennsylvania today. I hope he doesn't tie his remarks to the proposed raiding of the horse racing revenue or this could get a lot more dire in a hurry.
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#5
02-18-2014, 04:53 PM
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#6
02-19-2014, 09:24 PM
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__________________
Gentlemen! We're burning daylight! Riders up! -Bill Murray
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#7
02-20-2014, 12:06 AM
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I guess, if you're a writer at Forbes who knows nothing about horse racing, that would be a sound conclusion to make. However, that is so far from reality it's comical. Slots money NEVER, in any way, anywhere, does any good for the "cigar-chewing guys escaping their nagging wives by playing the ponies." Be it Pennsylvania, New York, or anywhere else...not a dime of slots revenue ever goes to the bettor. It's simply welfare money for horsemen, and a huge handout to suit-and-tie wearing folks who work for racetracks.
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