Racing's Weekend of 'Disruption'

Hello everyone. That was a really quiet holiday weekend, wasn't it?

All that happened, by my count, was a horse race occurred where one of the leading jocks in the nation almost met his maker, a horse worth many millions was running loose around a track, and owner and defacto Horse Racing Commissioner Mike Repole went on video tirades on twitter. He also hammered Andy Serling who blocked him (ok, maybe this isn't too out-of-the ordinary). 

In my slice of the world, y'all were big time banging on the twitter pretty hard on this. I got flamed almost 3% as much as Jessica Paquette does, Zocalli was firing guns as the President of the God Bless Rabbits Committee. Thank goodness Beem's communist captors kept him shielded from all this. 

The thing that confuses me most about the reaction to this race was, in some quarters, the "surprise" it happened. 

Rabbits have been entered since bloodletting times in blue blood events with one sole purpose - to disrupt a horse race. 

When disruption happened in the JCGC, it's a natural and logical progression. It should be nothing to be surprised about. 

We can't challenge Mike Tyson to a fight and be dumbfounded that our jaw is broken. 

The broader question, I think, is why this phenomenon even exists. 

I've seen the whole "Frankel had a rabbit" thing referenced, but why did he have one? Would the world stop spinning if he didn't have enough pace to chase and he ran second? No. Would we as bettors be inconvenienced by him running third? Certainly not, we deal with analyzing pace in races 50,000 times a year and bet accordingly. 

As I see it, rabbits are entered particularly so blue blood pedigrees, owned by many people who make more money by noon than I will in my lifetime, can maximize the value of their bloodstock by earning black type. 

I don't think there's anything more to it. 

Rabbits aren't entered in February at Laurel; the trainers don't have enough money to enter another entry to kill off the lone speed and set it up for their closer. It won't happen at Mountaineer tonight either. In fact, if it did happen at Mountaineer tonight, the trainer of the aggrieved party might meet the other trainer behind the barn for a talking to, and it would never happen again. 

Even Sherrifs with Zenyatta didn't enter a rabbit in the Clement Hersh, where they went 3/4's in like 1:17 in a eight and a half furlong race to try and beat her. So what, if she loses she loses. That's horse racing. 

No, this is a part of the one tenth of one tenth of one tenth percent of horse racing; it's their world not ours. 

Until this tiny group gets together and wants to end it by putting restrictions on entries, horses who don't belong in a race will be there to disrupt the race. And in some cases, like on Sunday, they will succeed. 

We can be happy the disruption didn't reach its zenith because that would've been tragic, but when you inject chaos into a race artificially, things can turn bad in a hurry. 

Have a great Tuesday everyone.