Tuesday Musings

It's Tuesday, right? There is some interesting stuff going on, well to me anyway.

Tom Lamarra writes a nice quick-hit blog at the Bloodhorse and today's is good again. It is difficult as we all know to go too far out on a limb in a trade paper. Tom walks a fine line, but still gives us all something to talk about. We need more blogs like that on industry websites in harness.

Jessica can not possibly be doing a better job with regards to the New England racing situation and looking at it from the customer side. This is old hat to us as it has happened in Ontario about a half dozen times. Harness handles, as reported this month in Trot, are savaged here with a lot of this nonsense. Racing must come to grips with the fact that when people leave, a lot never come back. No business in the land has ever grown by annoying customers and racing is no exception.

Last night I procrastinated from real work and got to researching betting overseas, just to keep tabs. Scott over at his blog linked a story where Sumo Wrestling has fallen into the fixing arena. Throughout history, usually when participants are over 600 lbs the talk of fixing only involves horses.

My old pal from Sweden, Janne, chimed in on bets in Sweden today in the comments section about my bet types post below. Nice to hear from you again.

Andrew Twaits blog in Australia via Betfair gives a good glimpse into the juxtaposition, political infighting, and back-scratching that can go on with racing policy. It generally uses hard numbers too, which is rare.

"Congratulations to the NSW Government for recognising that the NSW TAB needs to lower its effective takeout rates in order to compete for price sensitive customers and generate additional revenue for the racing industry."

Congrats indeed. Everyone in NA seems to know that too, but why do they do the opposite? I have no idea.

Being a dual-sport bettor I can honestly say that Pace is something that harness bettors use and have studied as much or more than any handicapping tool. I am constantly amazed when I look at the discussion of the subject on thoroughbred chat boards to see the lack of consensus opinion on the matter. I agree with Maloney that Pace in that game is still underutilized, especially the concept of uneven fractions. There is a three part series on Pace on a UK website and I am interested to read where this fellow is going for part three.

Hollywood Park & Santa Anita seeks to cut days in March. If the purses stay the same this is a purse cut. If not, average purse size will go up and the horsemen will be happy. The purse argument still rules the roost, even though it has been several years with no progress.

I finally got around to watching Secretariat the movie this past weekend. Hollywood can make a sporting event look great, a war scene like the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan look amazingly real, and a heavyweight boxing match weave magic. But it can't show a horse race. Horse racing is a been there, done that sport. Despite a $35M budget, the film could not come close to capturing the Belmont Stakes, in my opinion. It is preaching to the choir, and millions of people in the world will not agree, but that grainy footage is one of the most exhilarating 2 minutes and 24 seconds the world of athletics will ever see. No fancy graphics, pretty actresses, handsome actors and camera trickery do it justice.

Have a good Tuesday everyone!