The Canadian Sportsman
February 04, 2010
Through the centuries, from Delphi in Ancient Greece right up through Keanu Reeves in “The Matrix”, philosophy students have been advised by the oracles to “Know thyself.” So let’s sit quietly for a moment and think about this. In order to try to understand what the future holds for harness racing, we must first fully grasp the present. What are we? What is harness racing? Not in a touchy-feely, vague, feel-good sense, but as a business. And not what we’d like to think of ourselves as, not where we were 40 years ago, but what we truly are, right here, right now.
Are we a sport? And again, don’t think about this as an esthetic, think about this in terms of whether harness racing is a sustainable economic endeavor. Look at other sports, the ones we can all agree are viable, the long-established ones like baseball, and hockey, and golf, and brand-new ones like mixed martial arts. Their entire business models are based on the enthusiasm of their fan base. Their revenue comes primarily from three sources: ticket sales, and television rights, and merchandising. Are people going to pay admissions, or watch harness racing on television, or buy harness racing hats and hoodies in quantities that would justify us, in 2010, calling ourselves a sport? No, they are not.
Are we a form of entertainment? Like movies, and television, and video games? This is the business I work in, and again, the entertainment industry is driven by one thing and one thing only: eyeballs on the screen, and asses in the seats. Again, as a business, I don’t believe we have the numbers to qualify.
Are we a horse event, like an equestrian competition, or a horse show? Where the audience is limited to a small but enthusiastic following? Likely, but this is a scary thought. The prizes for winning these events tend to be ribbons and trophies, and as a business, is that where we’re headed?
Are we a gambling option? Resoundingly yes. Open your eyes. This is who we are. And there is an extremely large potential audience that loves to gamble. Hundreds of millions of people, all over the world. And to a greater and greater extent, they are not gambling on us. They are who we must seek out. They are who can insure our future. And for those of you who feel this is unfair, that this marginalizes us, you are wrong. The problem is not that all we are is a gambling option. It is that we are a poor gambling option. We do not provide the excitement and action and fun and jackpots that the casual gambler is looking for. We do not provide the lower takeouts and legitimate chance to win that the serious gambler is looking for. And we must find a way to give one, or both, what they want if we are to have any chance to survive. Some individual racetracks, the Meadowlands, Pocono Downs, Cal-Expo, have made efforts to seed and guarantee pools, and reduce takeouts on some bets, and they are smart. What would be even smarter would be for everyone to join together and do it on a grand scale.
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November 09, 2009
“The only people for me are the mad ones...” starts the most famous quote of one of the writers I worship, Jack Kerouac, from his most famous novel, “On the Road.” He talks about these people, who burn with enthusiasm, who damn the torpedoes and live in the moment, who are “desirous of everything at the same time.” Kerouac’s wild words popped into my mind as I looked at the Harrisburg sales results this past week, and I found myself thinking about the thousands of hardy souls who make up our community, how we are bound together through this inexplicable, irrational love for harness racing, and, with sirens going off and warning lights flashing all around us, we keep our hands on the wheel and our foot on the accelerator.
Be rational for a minute. Be logical. Go state to state, province to province, and tell me where the sun is shining. In the United States, at the moment, it’s getting awfully dark in Michigan. And it’s going to be a cold, hard winter in Ohio and Illinois. It’s been grey for awhile in California, and black in Maryland. The sun is shining in a few spots in New York, but not so much as was forecast in others. Indiana seems warm and bright. But Pennsylvania is being threatened by givebacks. And storm clouds seem to be gathering in force over New Jersey.
Does the weather for harness racing look inviting in Alberta? Will Quebec ever recover from the storms of this past year? The owners, trainers and drivers of Ontario are safe for now, but how will their lives change as they take in the refugees of these other disasters? For every horseman thriving in a jurisdiction where racing is healthy, there must be 10 compatriots struggling to keep their heads above water in neighbouring states. Did this seem like a good time for a horse sale?
But there they were, on the road, just like Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in the novel, except instead of heading west to California in search of excitement and fortune, these dreamers burned, burned, burned toward central Pennsylvania, and proved they were mad. In a year where the economy had only just started to emerge from recession, in an autumn where the thoroughbred yearling sales cratered, the mad horsemen of our industry spent and spent, to the tune of a marked increase in yearling prices. And then they spent on racehorses, and they spent on broodmares, and they spent on stallion shares.
I have written piece after piece about the trouble I see ahead. About the difficulties we as a sport will likely endure. If you only know me from this blog, you probably find me Vulcan-like in my logic, pessimistic in my outlook. So I’ll end this with another famous Kerouac quote. “My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control over them.” That’s my way of saying I, too, bought a yearling at Harrisburg. Mad, indeed.
October 13, 2009
Okay, the new whipping rules are in effect in many jurisdictions. No more one-handers, no more drivers raising their swords high above the shoulder and cracking their horses across their muscular hind-quarters and stifles. And we all feel good about ourselves. But are we as a sport really, truly prepared to deal with animal abuse in harness racing today? Or is it enough to make an example of a mostly-cosmetic issue, make a public showing of “See, we love our horses, and we will no longer give them hard spanks on the tush,” and move along with the status quo? Because the real abuse in harness racing comes at the hand of those who are trained and licensed to provide the ultimate care for our horses. Actual life-threatening, career-ending damage cannot come from a driver’s whip; it comes every day, on the backstretch of every racetrack, from a veterinarian’s syringe.
Don’t get me wrong. There are wonderful veterinarians out there, surgeons who save horse’s lives, and reproductive vets who get and keep our mares pregnant and stay up all night to protect the health of our foals. And there are racetrack veterinarians who handle emergencies with aplomb, and provide the systemic and therapeutic tools required in keeping our animals sound and healthy as they compete on a weekly basis. These are the doctors who love horses, and love the sport. They know who they are, and they know this blog is not about them.
I am writing about the veterinarians who do not love horses. The ones who have abandoned their ethics, and their morality. The ones who have given up diagnostics in favor of prophylactic treatment. The ones who push the envelope right up to what is legal, and too often beyond, masking the pain that would lead a horse to protect himself from further, more serious injury. And there are plenty of them. You know the ones I am talking about. The ones who send bills to the owners with itemized charges for “prerace” or “Rx” or “Special Jug” without providing any actual information about what is in the syringe or the tube. The ones who inject feet, ankles, knees and hocks all at the same time, with both acid and cortisone so as not to miss anything. I’m no Pollyanna and I’m no prude, and I more than anyone can vouch for the effectiveness of hyaluronic acid, as I had it injected into my own knee when I was still lame a few months after knee surgery, and have never had a problem since. But I also know that 30 years ago, when I was a groom, there were vets who did flexion tests to determine lameness, or spent an entire morning blocking a horse, from the foot to the ankle to the knee, trying to determine the source of lameness. These methods took time, I guess, and time is money, and nowadays, instead of trying to figure out what is actually wrong with a horse, it is easier, faster and far more lucrative to inject, tube, or shockwave everything and everywhere, knowing that the problematic spot will be hit, and in a few starts, they’ll get to do it all over again.
The owners and trainers are at fault, too. But they never went to vet school, where I’m certain that a philosophy of helping animals must have been part of the curriculum. The owners and trainers probably weren’t little boys or girls who dreamed one day of helping animals. If medical doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, in which they swear to practice medicine ethically, and to never do harm, is it too idealistic to believe that racetrack veterinarians should live by this same credo?
I urge the racing commissions to adopt more stringent regulations requiring veterinarians to file every medicine and supplement prescribed and administered to each and every horse on the grounds of every racetrack and training centre in their jurisdiction. And for veterinarians to undergo periodic random searches on their vehicles and supply trailers. And I urge those vets who still have consciences to stop treating every patient with the goal of making sure they can go to post next week, and to more often refer their patients to their esteemed colleague, Dr. Green. Because time isn’t just money; where our horses are concerned, it’s money well spent.