Op/Ed

It was a while back that Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella came up with an idea to help protect the horse and reduce the number of catastrophic on-track injuries. Mandella suggested that North American racing should do away with claiming races as we know them and adopt the European system in which some horses are sold or claimed after, and not before, they race. That, he contended, would remove any temptation a trainer might have to run an unsound horse in a claiming race in hopes that someone might...

This is the most important week to the Kentucky Thoroughbred industry since 1902, when Colonel Matt Winn and a group of investors purchased Churchill Downs, which was in financial ruin and ready to shut down. As we all know, the rest is history for Churchill Downs, the Kentucky Derby and the sport of horse racing. Like 107 years ago, the Kentucky Thoroughbred industry is at a crossroads.

Riddle: Who among us performs the most difficult job in the industry while bringing widespread added value to our sport … day after day, week after week, year after year? Answer: A small fraternity of especially talented professionals known as track announcers. Think the job is not difficult? Go ahead, practice as long as you want, pick up a microphone and try to enthusiastically call a race with four or more horses. See how you do. (I rest my case.)

I'm a simple guy. I swear. My Mom said I never understood why my sister took forever to decide what to wear out on a Saturday night. I worked on the basis that if what you said when you opened your mouth didn't make sense, then the best clothes in the world wouldn't help you at all. It helped when I opened my mouth--I could sell just about anything, but the idea was I kept it simple and did alright.

As a populist horseman, it makes me smile when a relatively obscure horse comes out of the hinterlands and beats up on a bunch of fashionably bred horses who are sired by generally over-priced, over-hyped, and over-bred stallions. And it turns my smile into a broad grin to observe that Mine That Bird is a mid-May foal.

I will leave it up to analysts more qualified than me to figure out whether Polytrack is safer than dirt, even though the initial evidence suggests that the synthetic surface has already saved the lives of many of our equine warriors. From my narrow perspective, however, if somebody can tell me the good part about watching races on Polytrack, I for one would love to hear about it.

Tomorrow starts the Masters golf tournament. Millions of people will watch this great show and then go out and increase their participation in golf. The Masters is the premier event in the structure of golf. When it started, there was no PGA Tour, just a bunch of golfers being jerked from one event to the next, kind of like racehorse owners today. When the major league PGA Tour was established, they decided the Masters, The PGA and the U.S. Open should remain separate, distinct events. In the Masters, the players'...

Pondering the possibility that Mafaaz could make the Kentucky Derby while Dunkirk is left in the cold, I have dusted off columns previously published elsewhere in May 2005, May 2007 and June 2008. Needless to say, the Derby's graded earnings rule has been one of my pet peeves for some time.

Don't you just hate politics? Seems like politics creeps into everything today. Banks, real estate, autos, you name it and politics is now involved. The Kentucky horse industry has thrust itself into politics in pursuit of slots at the tracks. For those of you outside Kentucky, adding slots at the tracks might seem a no-brainer for the center of the Thoroughbred industry. But politics in Kentucky, like everywhere, is complicated. My ad agency used to do political campaigns in Kentucky, including an amendment to the state constitution. During such campaigns,...

A year ago, fractional clockings for the 1 1/8 mile Fountain of Youth S. appeared suspiciously slow, and the suspicions were well-founded: the timing beam was triggered prematurely, and a new set of official times was released. This episode also brought to light that Gulfstream Park's oval is 17 feet longer than the intended circumference, due to a surveying error which necessitated a complex adjustment in the timing of nine-furlong races.

Survival of Thoroughbred horse racing on the scale we have known it may be in greater jeopardy than usual because of a confluence of events that is being fueled by the current economic crisis. Those of us who derive our incomes solely from the industry have come to fully realize horse racing is not an activity that is required for the existence of life. In the current climate, the only group outside of the game's participants that might like to see racing continue is the state governments where betting on...

Last week I challenged Kentucky Thoroughbred interests not to pursue alternative gaming (VTLs). I promised to show how a positive change to the racing environment through the introduction of a new bet would serve to get racing's fan base pumped up on a regular basis. My concept is far from original, yet proven in popularity. With a twist here and there, it can, I believe, jump-start our sagging game.