Back in the 1970's in the northern tundra there was a guy in town who everyone knew, Frenchy Clouthier.
Frenchy dropped out of school early and became a mechanic, and he could fix pretty much any machine in a jiffy. He also had a propensity for being a bit of a daredevil on these machines; cars, trucks, bikes or at a place perpetually under snow cover, snowmobiles.
One day word was getting around that Frenchy was going to do something pretty wild. Right in the middle of town he was going to cross the river - not a small river, a fairly big one - in his suped up snow machine.
Now, this might've not been the biggest story ever in January, because the ice was four feet thick. But he was planning to do this in July when the river was, well, a river.
A grade school friend and I got a ride from one of our parents because we had to see this spectacle. We had no idea how Frenchy was going to pull this off. We set ourselves up on the bank in a good spot, along with most of the town.
Right on cue Frenchy barreled down the hill in his ski-doo, reaching blazing top speeds; gravel and sand flying everywhere. We held our breath, wondering if Frenchy was going to end up, metaphorically, crashing into Arnold's chicken stand.
The machine's skis hit the water, and instead of plunging directly into the depths of the cold river, sinking both man and beast down to the bottom, something amazing happened. Frenchy and the snowmobile just kept going. And going and going. He reached the bank on the other side, and waved to whatever-many incredulous locals.
When in my real life over the last twenty years I give a seminar on under promising and over delivering, I sometimes talk about Frenchy. That man surely could deliver.
In the sport of horse racing I don't think we've ever had an underpromise. And really, who is promised what can differ, sometimes in an opposing way.
We promise horsepeople they can qualify a horse in 45 days which is good for them, but it's injurious to bettors.
We promise dreams about lasix free racing, but that goes against the trainer you sold your bleeder to because the horse can't go without the drug.
We promise uniform rule books, and then we don't deliver adjudicating or the calling of these rules consistently because we treat them like guidelines.
It's Newton's Law of Motion - we put forth something with a promise, but an equal and opposite reaction from another fiefdom pays the price, which always results in an under deliver. This sport's promises are a paradox.
Racing, I have always believed, should have always played a whole lot of small ball. It needs to promise what can be achieved and do that one small thing well by overdelivering. Then do more of them. There is no doubt in my mind it can be done - with ADWs, track rules, consistent judging, myriad things. However, I think the culture is so broken and so overcome with the fiefdoms, and arguments, and intransigence, it can't embrace it.
Business is at times one of the most pure, simple vocations. If you are telling customers you're going to cross a river, you need to make sure you get to the other side.
Have a great Monday everyone.
1 comment:
As you go farther back in time, horse racing was the one of the big gambling dogs on the block aside from casinos. Back in the day when San Francisco had two major newspapers, each had their own genuine public handicapper setting their own morning lines to go with PPs and picks.
There was a far bigger audience than those that went to the local tracks, because bookies were taking a lot of money from horseplayers that were never able to make it to the races. The race tracks never saw this audience nor their money, so they were too easy to ignore when interest in horseracing started to fade locally.
Horseracing in the Bay Area never advertised much at all in the papers (or much at all), yet got essentially free advertising. So when newspapers faded, one of the first things to go was racing coverage and the newspaper handicappers. Did the tracks change their attitude or game plan to go with changing times? Intransigence, indeed.
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