The Canadian Sportsman
November 29, 2010
This is usually a fun part of the year. If you were lucky enough to have had a great racing season, the trophies are on the mantel, the winner’s circle photos are back from the framers and up on the walls and the race replays are on a continuous loop in the DVD player. And if it was a disappointment, it’s time to turn the page. The colts are hooked and going, and trainers are emailing with first impressions. Some babies are pacing free-legged, ears forward, leaning into their snaffle bits and striding alongside their peers, eager to pass if given the opportunity. The schedules come from the staking services, and you start to think, which races will I put them in?
This year is different. This year, I look at the stakes engagements and wonder, which races will actually be contested? Which tracks will even be open? Which tracks will decide early in 2011 to ditch their stakes schedules and stick to their subsistence-level overnight racing? Which stallions will be packing up and heading toward jurisdictions with racinos? Which new stallions will crowd out the established sires in those same states? How can the same four or five-stud farms keep adding the brightest lights of the past racing season without cannibalizing the demand for last year’s champion, or for what’s-his-name-again, the headline horse from three years ago?
Many of us have been standing on the edge of the cliff for a few years already, but now the pebbles are starting to fall away from under our feet. And yet, people are still spending money in this business. There are people out there who are writing checks for millions and millions of dollars of yearlings and stallion syndications. The Takters and Burkes and Erv Millers and Menarys and Gillises and Colemans, have never made more money, or spent more money. The rich get richer in this business, and the poor, well, in a few years, we won’t even remember who they were. They’ll be gone. We live in a time where the most successful trainers have 50 horses in the barn, 80 horses, 100 or more. And each year, another group of smaller trainers leave the business. It’s the new normal, three and four horses from the same stable in every stakes race, in every top-class overnight. Perhaps it reflects the economy at large, at least here in the United States: 10 per cent of the population controls 60 per cent of the wealth, or something like that. Why should it be any different in harness racing? The haves prosper like never before, the have-nots are driven out of the business. In a sport based on competition, the competitors grow fewer by the day.
I guess most of my friends up North are okay with this. Because when Standardbred Canada offered up a plan to try and do something about where this sport is headed, the only potential game-changer on the horizon, and amass a war chest of money for marketing, for publicity, to do something, for god’s sake, I believe every horseman’s organization up there refused to participate. “No one’s taking a percentage of our money, not even five per cent, without us having some control,” or words to that effect. Well, my friends, wrap your minds around this: it’s not your money. It’s welfare money. You’re all on welfare. Look at the handle, look at the purses, especially at the B-tracks. It’s welfare, and rather than using some of that money for the common good, so one day maybe, to some extent, the sport can be a little less dependant on welfare dollars, most of you said “Shove it!” One of the harshest criticisms of any welfare system is that it eventually makes its recipients unwilling or even unable to go back to work. To make sacrifices. People feel entitled to handouts. Sound familiar? Well, it’s time to change the culture. Make the decision to put the money aside. Figure out what to do with it afterwards. Make the sacrifice. Go back to work.
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“Sit up straight!!” How many times have you heard that one in your life? Most likely it was long ago, from a parent, or a teacher. But recently? And from a gambler?
Well, here I am, saying it. And I’m saying it to all our leading drivers out there, people whose talent I truly admire and envy. And I say it knowing I am most likely wasting my breath. But all this new-style leaning-straight-back aerodynamics is seriously, insidiously, damaging the racing product. There’s always been a serious front-end bias over half-mile racetracks, but over the last decade, it seems, even on the larger ovals, horses go to the front and last till the wire far more than they ever did during our sport’s glory days. Any chance that some of this is due to the new-school posture of our current group of leading reinsmen?
When I started betting on the races, in the days when the wooden Jerald sulky was state-of-the-art, the driver sat above the wheels of the bike, his handholds at most a couple or three feet behind the stitched-together portion of the lines. (Leather lines only in those days, kids.) As a race unfolded, and the horses dropped into place nose-to-helmet, picture the amount of ground a horse would have to make up during the course of the mile to reach the finish line first.
And then picture it now. To begin with, each driver now sits behind the wheels of his race bike. His handholds might be anywhere from four to five feet to even further away from the stitching. Imagine the red-hot George Brennan (above) on the front end as a field of horses hits the quarter at the Big M. Although I suspect I may be conservative in my estimation, between current sulky design and his preferred posture, let’s say his helmet is three feet further back then Buddy Gilmour’s was back in the day. Now, in the two-hole, picture the aggressive Yannick Gingras, trying to relax his mount, a bit charged up from leaving hard, following tightly along. Now, my math skills are awfully rusty, which I prove every time I try to help my daughter with her homework, but I can still do simple addition, and three plus three equals six, which is how many feet Yannick’s helmet is behind where the guy sitting in the two-hole in the 1980’s was.
And I can still do simple multiplication, and eight times three equals 24. Which is how many feet further back the poor fella who got away eighth is than his counterpart from the old days was. So now, in order to come from eighth place, a horse has to make up an additional 24 FEET to win the race! Twenty-four feet in a sport where I’m pretty sure the average winning margin is less than a quarter of that.
When I was a teenager, falling in love with the sport from the other side of the fence, as a field of horses turned for home at the Meadowlands, every one of them still had a chance to win. Sadly, that is rarely the case anymore. The same is true at Mohawk, and drastically more so at Woodbine. We are our own worst enemies, as we so often are. In an effort to go faster and faster, we make the actual racing far worse. One bright spot is Hoosier Park, where the management and stewards are to be commended for their strict rules about how far back the drivers are allowed to recline. So it is possible to change. Which makes our sport’s continued march toward the edge of the cliff all the more frustrating.
February 25, 2010
If you buy into the premise that harness racing is first and foremost a gambling game, there is a form of wagering this year in Ontario that promises bountiful rewards if you can pick the right horse. And in all my years of following the sport, I have never seen a more wide-open field of impressive candidates. It is a handicapping puzzle of the highest order, and once you’ve made your picks, be prepared to wager thousands of dollars, because that’s the minimum buy-in.
I am speaking of the challenge of choosing a pacing stallion to breed to in 2010. And good luck to you if you can come with a strong opinion, either for who will wear the crown at the end of the 2013 racing season, or who will be wearing the dunce cap. I guess there are safer choices, like the reigning king Camluck, still producing winners after all these years. But many students of pedigree believe the breed gets faster in each generation, and would look away from a grandson of Most Happy Fella now that there are great-great-great-grandsons of the Most Important Sire of the last 40 years available. So how about proven quantities like Badlands Hanover, No Pan Intended, and Mach Three, who are all capable of producing the best horse in the province, or in the latter’s case, both hemispheres? Excellent choices, clearly. Sensible bets. And there are other sires who have shown they can get the job done, such as Blissfull Hall and Electric Stena and Royal Mattjesty. But maybe when looking out over the post parade, another contender has caught your eye. A horse who hasn’t had any babies old enough to stare down a starting gate. That would remove numbers and facts and just reduce the debate down to opinions. No shortage of those around a racetrack, huh?
Could the Big horse of a few years down the road be the iron-tough free-for-aller Mister Big? It would be hard to argue with a breeder willing to take a large position on this magnificent multi-millionaire. But if you’re partial to horses who left an impression as full-grown older horses, particularly those who in addition piled up the wins as three-years-olds, isn’t it tempting to land on the dazzling Artistic Fella? Or Lis Mara, who only a few short years ago was as dominant a pacer as any of these? Maybe you’re the type who values two-year-old accomplishments above all. Well, then, could it be the brilliant freshman Major In Art, who, racing out of a small stable, landed the one-two punch of Wilson and Metro victories before an injury sent him to the stallion ranks? He might not even be the best siring son of Art Major in the province, as the imposing Santanna Blue Chip will be servicing his second large book of mares in 2010. How about a Jug winner like Shadow Play, who had the misfortune of coming along in the same crop as Somebeachsomewhere and Art Official and still set two world records and won over a million dollars at three? Or the wickedly fast son of Western Ideal, Armbro Deuce (above, Dave Landry photo), whose unforgettably vivid Confederation Cup win alone has been responsible for dozens and dozens of bookings in his first years at stud. Confusing, right? I’m just getting started.
Why not Jeremes Jet, who did it as a young horse, took a little time off, and did it again as an older animal? Or Astronomical, who did it all and free-legged, to boot? Or the ultra-talented and popular Stonebridge Regal, or the impeccably-bred Perfect Union, or Whosurboy? How about Secrets Nephew, Eagle Luck, or the younger, more affordable brother to both Bettors Delight and the aforementioned No Pan Intended, Classic Card Shark?
And there are others, and they will have supporters too. I’m on the verge of making a few bets myself. Happy gambling, and looking forward to comparing results a few years down the road.