- COMPREHENDING BARBARO
Saturday's horrific circumstances have affected race fans and non-fans alike and produced a flood of comments. Experts are debating the "quality of the breed", the Triple Crown schedule and the specific circumstances of Barbaro's travail. While I understand the general sentiments being expressed by people like Pat Forde, who called for Polytrack installation at all ovals, there are several elements to his piece (available at ESPN.com) that are contradictory and knee-jerk reactionary.
Foremost, the industry IS studying and extensively evaluating safer alternative surfaces and taking action to improve the safety of their ovals. When a historic track like Keeneland, and potentially Santa Anita, Del Mar, Hollywood, Bay Meadows and Golden Gate all move to Polytrack, how is that categorized as "inertia"?
And Magna spent millions tearing up the main tracks at Gulfstream and Laurel in the past three years to improve those strips. Monmouth just installed a new turf course to improve its' safety. More and more grass races are being carded around the country which help
promote longevity as turf runners tend to suffer fewer injuries.
Another central issue being raised is that of fan retention. That point is somewhat moot. Accept the fact that racing is gambling driven... PERIOD. It's nice to have people that are casual fans, but the game is first, last and always a pari-mutuel event. If you couldn't gamble on the outcome, there'd be no racing at all... Around 1908-1910, during the anti-gambling crusades led in part by NY governor Charles Evans Hughes, racetracks went dark in every state except Maryland and Kentucky. If the "love of the spectacle and glory" is so important, why didn't they run the races during that period? The answer is because no one would come...
Casual fans are not what drives racing. "Money through the wickets" drives racing. Racing isn't in need of people that tune in four times a year... Racing is in need of people that BET. Forget casual fans... What we've lost are casual gamblers.
No one loves the romanticized element of the game more than me. But I'm not under the delusion that racing suffers entirely because we don't have stars that stay around long enough for fans to enjoy and embrace. That's an element of it, sure.. But racing suffers because the GAMBLING LANDSCAPE IN AMERICA HAS CHANGED. There are so many gambling options for people now compared to even 10 years ago... let alone 25 or 50 years ago...
And wagering on racing is complex and difficult for people to master. We need to make it easier for potential customers to get into the game the only way it matters: at the windows. The main issue here is that horse playing is an intellectual pursuit, and the "fans" that are "missing" these days are the people that now sit in front of slot machines or VLTs that need constant stimulation.
The #1 "complaint" in surveys about visiting a racetrack is always the "insufferable" wait between races. The fact is that the attention span of Americans has become so limited, that they can't sit for 28 minutes without a bell or whistle going off or something to keep them entertained.
Does the industry need better centralized management? Yes..
Does the industry need to do a better job marketing the product? Yes..
Does the industry need to address the concerns Pat Forde and other are thoughtfully raising? Yes..
Do the breeders need to re-evaluate their foolhardy and destructive path toward horses faster than their bodies are capable of carrying? Yes..
But understand that when owners whisk three year olds off to the breeding shed, they do so because it is the only opportunity to recoup some, all or any of the money that is generally invested by owners. Before indicting those that cash in their young star, know
and remember that virtually EVERY OWNER LOSES MONEY EVERY MINUTE THEY PARTICIPATE IN RACING.
Racing exists because of the largess of people with millions of dollars to "waste" on it as a past-time. That was true when the Earl of "Darby" established his race at Epsom three centuries ago and it was true when the Keanes and Lorillards and Dwyer Brothers and
Vanderbilts and Whitneys built racing in America. The everyday fan and bettor co-exists with the current "ruling class" of racing, and that's just the reality.
You have to enjoy racing for what it is: an archaic relic of America when it was a fledgling agrarian nation. Is the game slow to change? Yes. Will it thrive as it did for 100 years after the Civil War? No. But that's not because the game needs to change. It's because the world around it has changed.
With all due respect to those making NASCAR analogies, you can't put restrictor plates on thoroughbred racehorses. You can try to reduce the risk of injury to them with potentially safer surfaces... You can try to breed them to be slower and sounder... You can try to adjust the racing calender to be more kind to the current state of the breed...
But horses have broken down from the moment they were pitted against one another, and that's never going to change. Even if every possible opportunity is taken to minimize the risk.
Steve Byk