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 be duped into taking them of his or her hands. If the horses are sold after the race, no one is going to buy an unsound or injured horse who may not have made it around the track in one piece.
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