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.

Controlling the Message

It was recently announced that there were several morphine positives in the UK. One of the horses who tested positive was the Queen's horse. Yes, that Queen.

This has made headlines, and most of them scream like the one in the above link does. Short version: Racing is crooked, even the Queen does it.

Morphine positives, and other obvious egregious drugs that find their way into positive tests, are often due to some sort of contamination. An easy way to tell if the positive test is a mistake of some sort, is by releasing the levels of the drug in the system. 1 parts per billion, which will test, could not performance enhance an ant, let alone a twelve hundred pound racehorse. If we see those levels we know darn well it's an error.

I understand why racing has to release tests like this to the public, but they need to have some sort of narrative to go along with them. It's one thing for the trainer in question say "there was only a small amount in the system and it probably came from the feed", and quite another for the authorities to say similar; the latter meaning a lot more than the former.

It's not apoligizing for horse racing, it's about doing the right thing. A trainer - especially with the Queen's horse - would have to be insane to use morphine because he or she knows it will test. It's a non-starter and should be treated as such.

There are bad trainers out there. There's pre-race in the shadows that "won't test"; there are bloodbuilders and other nefarious drugs. We know this to be true because some have been caught, signed, sealed and delivered, and some will be caught again. Whenever there's money involved you'll find corruption. But in the above, no corruption was likely, and racing needs to do a better job in such situations. The public just sees "crook" and that's helpful to no one.

Monday Notes

Good morning everyone.  Here are a few things that caught my eye over the weekend.

Sebastian K was beaten at Mohawk on Saturday, as most know. Intimidate, the always fast but sometimes not sharp and sound trotter, nailed him in the final stride. It's pretty clear the off track bothered Sebastian K, as it does with tons of horses at Mohawk. Shoeing is pretty important on those days and Sebastian, who is reported to race barefoot, probably slipped and slid his way around the oval. 

After the race Modern Family, the super-nice trotter of Daryl Bier's who finished fourth, passed away in the paddock. That's horrifying. He was a nice trotter. The first person to comment on the passing in the Sc story was Intimidate's owner. They have class.

In Las Vegas a redone and remodel superbook is planned at a Westgate Resorts casino in Vegas. One line caught my eye:

"The spokesperson echoed Siegel in saying the biggest change will be a move more toward sports betting, with two-thirds of the venue geared to that and one-third to horse racing."

In Vegas, with so much to bet, 4.5% juice on sports betting rules the day. Old timers still like the track it seems, but as we all know, 21% (and rising) takeouts make for an unpalatable wager oftentimes.

Saratoga's meet is off and running through opening weekend. Logic would dictate, with fewer races and a likely dip in field size, handle might be off this meet by 5% or so, but I must say opening weekend was enjoyable from a betting perspective. NYRA gets clipped on social media often, but I find they are much better than the left coast tracks in promoting and offering good bets. The effects of the admission increase, which I think they handled poorly, are still TBD, but I figure it won't mean much either way. Revenue streams from admission for big race meets is something racing has to explore.

I know people like Del Mar as well, and if you say anything bad about it sometimes the west coasters take it personally. I can't say much either way. I have not played California racing since the takeout hike in 2010. The buzz for the meet seems okay, though.

Trixton won easily at the Big M on Saturday, as did Nuncio. Let's hope and pray for an 11 horse or so Hambo, with no eliminations.

Trotters with some European flavor continue to impress in driving web traffic, and interest. Greg on twitter said he put up two races on Youtube this weekend, the Battle of Lake Erie from Northfield and the Maple Leaf trot. The former featured the richest horse in harness racing, Foiled Again, the latter Sebastian K. The Maple Leaf Trot's hits were about 7:1 the Battle's.

Have a good Monday everyone.