Jeff Gural asked this week (paraphrasing): Please enter your horses at the Meadowlands so we can have a great set of cards and show the people I am negotiating with we are serious. This might very well be the last time we race here.
As we have spoken about before, Chester has peeled off entries, leading drivers now go across the border to Yonkers; all for the pursuit of slightly better purses. I guess that's fine, but as everyone knows - if the Meadowlands dies the sport of harness racing dies - so one might figure just this once people might rally for the good of the sport.
Surprise, crickets. According to some on facebook and twitter, the entry box is still open.
Steve Miller would be proud of this sport. After all, he penned the industry's theme song.
* Update: The card filled, but it isn't pretty. Only 9 races, two of which have 8 horses.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when the cash runs out. It's closer than we think.
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6 comments:
To the TOC, OHHA, Horsemen groups everywhere: GET OUT OF THE "BUSINESS" OF RACING NOW BEFORE YOU DESTROY IT.
Not just at the entry box, but I am amazed that a vast majority thinks it should be Mr. Gural and Partners to pull the rabbit out of the hat.
And no one else.
Surely the everyone in the standardbred industry should have come to realize that their own livelihood is in "crisis" mode.
I was actually thinking there would be other groups willing to help out harness racing if Mr. Gural was unable to stop the slapshot from Trenton.
How wrong I was. :(
It's pandemic. The rallying crying is "get as much now, because tomorrow it's gone"
You reap what you sew.
RG
Well, I must confess if I was scheduling the meet, I would have stopped last week as this week you have the Levy, Matchmaker, Petticoat, and Sagamore this weekend. However, even if you want to give horsemen a pass for this week, they had to pull teeth last week to get a card together.
"Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end...."
Who cares?
That's enough of that sh*t track!
not fair to use this headline---horseman have done nothing BUT rally round the Meadowlands since the first battle cry. But laying this weak box all on the horsemen is the easy, but unfair way out. Do race secreatries EVER talk to one another? The Levy, matchmaker and other series were planned long ago. These few weeks represent a crux of 7 racetracks going all on the same weekend. Shows terrible retail planning, and of course no foresight. Because foresight and racing are polar opposites.
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