A Common Refrain No One Talks About Much

In HRU today, owner of the ill-fated Modern Family spoke about the state of horse racing (pdf page 4), in the article titled "Domback Wants Out". 

•  Before his run of bad luck Dombeck was already disillusioned with the sport and he admitted that other issues have played into his decision to scale back. He says it's too hard to compete against the giant stables at the classier levels and that he feels that lower level races are
  dominated by drug cheats.

This is not an opinion you read in the press very often, but in grandstands and shedrows we've all heard it countless times.

Owning horses is not an investment vehicle and never really has been, as much as the powers that be try to make it one. It's about doing something with your money for entertainment, and like buying a lottery ticket because you might just get that home run horse.

Breakdowns, competing against 4 horse super stable entries, trying to claim a horse in that cess pool at some tracks is something that plagues horse racing - both Thoroughbred and harness - and has for some time.

People complain about falling foal crops, a lack of fans at the track, and a lack of new faces at horse sales. Nine times out of ten the complaint is that purses are not high enough. Purses do not have anywhere near the pull they are supposed to have; it's the structure of the game that has always been an issue. If you can't make money you need to be able to have fun. Right now for a lot of owners or potential owners, it's not much fun.