Op/Ed

Rick Dutrow has officially been banned from the game for a decade. Interestingly, like the notorious American miscreant Al Capone, Dutrow was knocked off his perch not by what people suspected he did, but by technicalities. Capone was not sent to prison for murder, but famously for tax evasion. Dutrow has not been suspended for using illegal practices as many suspect him of, but for lesser infractions.

I read with interest Charlotte Weber's letter that appeared in the TDN on Dec. 21. That same day I also read the CNN article, "How Racing Became Cool" and an article in the Wall Street Journal on hand-held devices and Internet gambling. The combination gave me cause for year-end thoughts as we turn the page on 2012.

This Swahili phrase means, “The journey, it has blown apart.” I write these words because my own journey in the horse business has come to an end.

When the Breeders' Cup debuted in 1984 it was a revolutionary concept. The fertile mind of the late John R. Gaines combined the idea of extraordinary purses of $1-million or more with the idea of running seven championship events on the same day, funded by a variation on the funding mechanism of Futurity races that depended on breeders' contributions to build the huge purses.

Where one lives can change one's perspective. Six years ago we moved from Lexington, Kentucky to the Tennessee county with the lowest population density and lowest per capita income of any county in a state where per capita income as a whole is 13.2% lower than the national average, according to 2010 census data. As a direct result of that move, my immediate, gut reaction to last week's brief suspension of exports of horses for slaughter to Canada was different than it might have been had I remained surrounded--insulated, actually--by...

Where one lives can change one's perspective. Six years ago we moved from Lexington, Kentucky to the Tennessee county with the lowest population density and lowest per capita income of any county in a state where per capita income as a whole is 13.2% lower than the national average, according to 2010 census data. As a direct result of that move, my immediate, gut reaction to last week's brief suspension of exports of horses for slaughter to Canada was different than it might have been had I remained surrounded--insulated, actually--by...

Thoroughbred owner Jack Wolf, Darley President Jimmy Bell, and Jockey Club President James Gagliano deserve accolades for pulling together the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance for retired Thoroughbred horses who have performed so admirably at the race tracks in America.

My Op/ed of September 27th detailed the fact that breeders lost more than $100 million in this year's Keeneland September sale. It's even scarier that breeders collectively lost a half billion dollars over the last four years.

Orfevre, 2011 Japanese Horse of the Year and Triple Crown winner, is the likely favorite for Sunday's Qatar G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, Europe's richest and most prestigious weight-for-age race. No Japanese horse has ever won the Arc, but Orfevre's attempt is hardly a one-off, and if it does not happen this year, it is going to happen soon.

So Andrew Cuomo wants to privatize NYRA, sell it to the highest bidder, which he figures will be any one of a dozen major companies who will be beating down the door of his Albany office with checkbooks in hand. Perhaps there is someone or some company out there who will want to buy NYRA, but that's only because the world is filled with gullible people.

The Keeneland September sale is now in the record books and the dust is settling. How it went pretty much depends on who you talk to and their particular reality and agenda or intention to spin.

In 1994 the Thoroughbred industry was in recovery mode. After reaching then-record heights in the mid-1980s, bloodstock lost about 35% of its value by 1992, but the tide had turned in 1993 as pinhookers reinvested profits and the optimism of racehorse owners rode the Clinton economic recovery.