As a result, NYRA had to drop six racing days from its winter schedule. No big deal. But a reluctance by horsemen from more permissive states to participate in New York could have a serious impact on the showcase Saratoga meeting this summer. The solution, a uniform national medication policy, is nowhere on the horizon.
No good deed goes unpunished may be an exaggeration—but not by much.
NYRA took a step this year toward dealing with a perception that pharmaceuticals are more influential in the outcome of races than equine ability and horsemanship. The pre-race cutoff time for certain medications was extended by several days. The reward for doing the right thing: field size decreased by an average of one horse per race, leading to six racing days being dropped during February and March.
A decline from an average eight-horse field to seven might not seem to be a big deal, certainly not enough to start eliminating racing days. The math says otherwise. An eight-horse field produces 56 exacta combinations and 336 trifecta possibilities. A seven horse field drops these numbers to 42 and 210. The comparisons are starker in three- and four-race horizontal wagers. These declines translate to a substantial loss in handle for the track as well as payoffs to winning bettors.
The primary reason for the shorter fields is a 75 percent drop in ship-ins from neighboring states, which aren’t as stringent in their medication rules. If racing were serious about dealing with the drug issue, other Mid-Atlantic states would have fallen in line with NYRA’s new policies. At least they are thinking about it. A meeting of Mid-Atlantic states as well as Illinois and Massachusetts to discuss uniform medication policies was held Feb. 6. But all they did was talk.
The ideal would be uniform medication rules nationally but this will happen the day after Congress balances the budget and pays down the national debt.
Racing jurisdictions aren’t partners, they’re competitors. Every horse that doesn’t ship to New York might help fill a race at its home track. Besides, there is probably a little “who died and left you boss?” attitude toward following New York’s lead. So NYRA suffers for attempting to do the right thing.
Scratching a few days during the winter is hardly a cause for consternation. Four-day (or less) weeks should be the norm during winter. But what is there to lead anyone to believe this won’t be a continuing problem year-round? Shippers aren’t as important during the Belmont spring meet when snowbird horses return to swell the local population and 2-year-olds from local outfits hit the track. However, the situation could have a negative impact on the showcase meeting of the year at Saratoga.
A sizable contingent of Kentucky horses bring quantity and quality to stakes, allowance, high-class claiming races and maiden special weights at the Spa. Shippers from other Mid-Atlantic states also show up on Union Avenue in greater numbers than they do on Hempstead Turnpike.
If enough out-of-town outfits decide they don’t want to play by the tougher New York medication rules, race, there are two alternatives. One is awful, the other not so bad. To replace the higher class races under the current schedule, more bottom-level New York-bred beaten claimers will have to be carded. The other option is to cut back to five days a week. Saratoga has become the only major track in the country that still races six.
Del Mar bit the bullet and reduced its agenda to five days and still is able to card only eight, sometimes seven, races on weekdays.
The other Southern California tracks struggle to card four days a week, even during the prestigious Santa Anita winter meet. The horse shortage is so acute out West that a pair of Grade 2 races, the San Antonio and Robert B. Lewis went to the post with four-horse fields and the Strub had only six break from the starting gate the first week in February.
Imprudent scheduling was a contributing factor. It defies logic to schedule the Strub for 4-year-olds a day before the San Antonio for older horses. Combine the two fields and there would have been an attractive San Antonio.
The entire three-race Strub series, designed to attract the previous year’s top 3-year-olds and ease them into their new division as older horses, needs to be re-examined. At the very least, one of the two-turn races should be eliminated. A seven-furlong Malibu, the traditional opening day feature when the horses are still 3-year-olds, leading into a two-turn race in January for new 4-year-olds would maintain tradition while bowing to current reality. It would also steer 4-year-olds into races like the San Antonio, where they belong.
In fact, one of the foursome in the San Antonio, Basmati, is a four-year-old. In a race that turned out to be a farce, he was the only one to seriously take it to Game On Dude, who towered over the field to such an extent that he went off at the legal minimum of five cents on the dollar and still created a minus win pool.
Basmati attempted to push Game On Dude down the backstretch while Clubhouse Ride and Make Music for Me appeared to be content to vie for the best of the minor awards while getting undeserved black type. (Scenarios such as this are something the graded stakes committee should look into, just as they do when graded races are taken off the turf.)
Basmati wound up the only starter not to earn black type—another example of no good deed going unpunished.
08 Feb 2013 at 11:28 am | #
Tom,
Your comment, “The primary reason for the shorter fields is a 75 percent drop in ship-ins from neighboring states...” is a gross exaggeration.
At the time that figure was bandied about in the press, there had been approximately 200 races at this current Aqueduct inner track meet. Less than 50 fewer shippers had come to Aqueduct at the time, according to NYRA sources.
Hence, the “ship-in” effect on field size was no more than 0.25 horse per race.
The primary reasons for the drop is this: NYRA-based horsemen are entering fewer horses.
Part of this is caused by fewer horses stabled at Aqueduct and Belmont, according to horsemen with whom I’ve spoken. In addition, some stables that have kept all their horses in NY have shipped them out of town to race at Parx, Penn National, and Laurel.
So, yes, the medication rule changes have had a dramatic effect on field size. But the majority of the reason is the action of NY-based horsemen. The drop in ship-ins is just a fraction of the cause and not the primary reason.
08 Feb 2013 at 02:23 pm | #
NY racing in the Winter has become pathetic. I barely follow it anymore.
Thought all that casino money was supposed to increase field size. What happened to that?
Good thing they’ve got big fields in Florida.
08 Feb 2013 at 04:35 pm | #
NK, racino infused purses notwithstanding, maybe they’re shipping out for friendlier clenbuterol, et al, confines?
08 Feb 2013 at 08:56 pm | #
Shipping out is likely an even bigger problem than lack of ship ins. Whether it be those stabled there now or those who left for sunnier climes and wouldn’t have had drug rules and purse structures been unchanged. But in the name of safety, NYRA doesn’t run a claimer for less than 12.5K, can’t offer more than 2X the claiming price as a purse, and has far stricter drug rules than neighboring states. So Denny, do you understand that these actions have all but nullified the effects of casino monies on field size? Kinda the point of the article. Running 4 days a week isn’t going to fix anything either. Less is less, despite what you’ve been told.
09 Feb 2013 at 10:38 am | #
Nick,
Point taken. You’re closer to the situation than I am, being here in South Florida.
But isn’t this six of one, half-dozen of another. Horses shipping out have the same effect as horses not shipping in, who usually do.
The cause is the same.
09 Feb 2013 at 11:16 am | #
In your commentary above you wrote ‘racing jurisdictions aren’t partners, their competitors’; this fact is far ahead of the other reasons normally expressed for the decline in Thoroughbred racing: takeout and drugs.
As to short fields, I relish them. I believe that short fields at Parx, Laurel, and Aqueduct have driven away the ‘heavy hitters’ and have left the ‘pickens’ to lowlifes like me. Small fields, IMO, are attractive to bettors like me who only wager on doubles and pick threes; the plugs that figure can be covered with a minimal investment. I have been amazed at the payoffs at Parx, even when favorites win all three, over the past few years.
Quantity and quality are the jargon of turf writers and a measurement of horseflesh that I never have understood in decades. Over the years I have gravitated to platers who have started 30 to 60 times; these claimers seem to flag their readiness to me via their racing cycle. Isn’t it all about making money, not what horse is going to win a stake race?
11 Feb 2013 at 12:23 pm | #
WMC,
To each his own. If you love beaten $3K claimers, go for it. But I wish you were at Gulfstream Saturday when the biggest crowd of the season, maybe the biggest non Florida Derby Day since the new facility opened, came out to see Animal Kingdom.
They were lined ten deep all the way around the vast walking ring. They applauded when Animal Kingdom came out and the crowd on the apron applauded when he came onto the track.
Nah, nobody cares about stakes races.
11 Feb 2013 at 01:55 pm | #
Yes, Mr. Jicha, they came out; they applauded, and they looked on in wonderment; but will ‘they’ be back tomorrow, next week, or will they wait until the next stake race? If ‘they’ weren’t led by turf writers to believe that stake races and a handful of trainers and jockey were the epitome of Thoroughbred racing, informed that all races are virtually identical in excitement and payoffs, and that racing at all racetracks is no different than one casino from another, Thoroughbred racing would not be in decline today.
11 Feb 2013 at 06:09 pm | #
If even a handful come back the next day or next week it’s a step in the right direction. Successful handicapping will never be as easy as pushing a button on a slot machine. It seems as though star power is the only thing that causes a bit of excitement at the track. Is the answer people sitting at home, betting online the answer to help the game grow? Getting folks in the track to enjoy the experience and someone to mentor them is would help. I wonder how many contributers here have introduced new peeps to the track…
If you can teach someone to win with cheap claimers, that would create a new player too. But there are still too many places that charge admission,parking and ridiculous food prices.....that model is broken.
12 Feb 2013 at 04:26 am | #
TJ,
Rather than a “good deed,” New York’s unilateral adjustment of medication rules appeared to me to be more an act of arrogance akin to CDI’s acrimonious abolition of Hawthorne Race Course as a stop on the Derby Trail. The resultant reduction in field size reflected an own-foot-shooting bulls-eye more than an undeserved “punishment.”
In my opinion, a “good deed” in this context would be an effort to form a delegation representing the state’s racing regulators, racetrack operators, and horsemen to meet with its counterparts from neighboring jurisdictions to hammer out what medication rules can be jointly adopted and which can’t (and why they can’t).