Op/Ed

Considerable debate has gone on in recent years about whether the Breeders' Cup would best serve its purposes by establishing a permanent base for its annual two days of racing. Having followed and written about racing history for many years, I have been keenly interested in this debate. In my opinion, a number of individuals who have not been in the game for more than 25 years or so might be overlooking at least one aspect of the history of the Breeders' Cup which I believe should take the permanent-site...

I happened to watch She'sawontontomato win the 6th race at Golden Gate on Saturday, June 4, as two of my favorite commentators celebrated Russell Baze winning his ninth race in 11 starts. Winning without honor, however, is not winning. After 30 strikes with the whip, I lost track of the number of times Baze hit the filly from the quarter pole home. The TV analyst's comment was, "He [Baze] had to work for it."

The other night, I was watching TV and a few wild dogs were trying to bring down a buffalo. They were having trouble until they were joined by more dogs and, lo and behold, they brought the buffalo down.

I had a call this week about a horse. Like all of the other calls, this one started with an ex-racehorse at an auction somewhere, and ended with the imminent threat that the horse would be sent off to the slaughterhouse if someone didn't step in.

I recently came across an article I wrote which was published in Pacemaker in February, 1997. On the one hand, I felt that it had been a bit prophetic; on the other hand, little has been done to correct the situation in the 14 years since.

At last, exchange wagering, a wildly successful concept in Europe and elsewhere, is on its way to the U.S. Governor Chris Christie signed a bill earlier this week that, among other things, authorized exchange betting in New Jersey. Once exchange wagering begins in the Garden State, which could happen as soon as the beginning of the 2011 meet at Monmouth Park, New Jersey will be the first state in country to have exchange wagering. What is exchange wagering and what might its advent mean to the racing industry?

When Tampa Bay Downs out-handled Santa Anita one day last week, it seemed that the world of horse racing had officially turned upside down. Some 10 years earlier, Tampa--then a cheap track no one cared about or paid any attention to--doing more business than mighty Santa Anita would have been unthinkable. Now it has happened, and it will likely happen again before both tracks conclude their 2010-2011 winter meets.

Amid the slumping economy, the empty grandstands and the tumbling bottom line, it's sometimes easy to forget that horse racing can be pretty special, even rather popular. Jeff Gural remembers. He came into the sport of harness racing during its golden era, when the stands were packed at Yonkers and Roosevelt Raceways and a driver, Carmine Abbatiello, had his own beer commercial. Whether it's harness or Thoroughbred racing, Gural isn't convinced that the sport can't climb its way back and do so without a crutch called slot machines.

Yesterday, the American Graded Stakes Committee announced their official upgrades and downgrades. I'm sure, if you looked carefully enough, you could make plenty of arguments about races that were rewarded for their importance and races that were penalized for their loss of impact. However, there is certainly one race that sticks out amongst them all. The committee decided that the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf, for colts, was worthy of a promotion from Grade II to a Grade I. I wholeheartedly agree and applaud this move upward. However, the female counterpart...

If there is a document or report in the Thoroughbred industry that is cited or mentioned more often than the "McKinsey Report," I am not aware of it. Almost any discussion of drugs and medication in our sport eventually leads back to a mention of that seminal report of 1991.

Why stud fees need to be slashed. A few stud fees for 2011 have already been announced, and so far it looks like business as usual, even though business as usual is a disaster. We cannot ignore the math and go forward with "blinkers on" when the best thing that can be said about this year's horse market is that it is not in free fall compared to the previous year. We have not yet found bottom. Meanwhile, farm owners in Kentucky continue to go out of business on a...

In recent years, all three of the foundation pillars that support our industry--bettors, racetracks, and owners, have been crumbling. Our old reliable bettors are aging, pulling back or are moving to other games. Our racetracks are under siege and many, even in big critical growth markets, are seemingly in danger of failure. And our racehorse owners have been reducing their stables, with some exiting our sport completely, or going on hiatus.