Rhodes College

Last month, Rhodes College economics professors Marshall Gramm and Nick McKinney published in these pages a study showing the estimated impacts at Aqueduct over the past four winters from CAW players during the last cycle. They found that since 2022, the percentage share from last cycle monies wagered into the Exacta, Trifecta, Superfecta and Early Pick 5 pools (among others), had grown significantly. There was a problem, however, with the study: unbeknownst to Gramm and McKinney, the New York Racing Association (NYRA) had switched to a new Tote operator in...

Paul Mostert, one of the founders of the study of the biomechanics in racehorses, died May 6 in Lexington at the age of 94, according to a story in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Mostert served in the Navy until the end of World War II, and would go on to get a Ph.D from Purdue University. A mathematics teacher at the University of Kansas, he retired to work in the field of biomechanics and would develop 14 software programs using mathematical models of the biomechanics of racehorses. He was the president...

Tired of all the bad news? So were we. So, in our new series, we focus on the positive, asking people from non-horse racing families two questions: how they get hooked, and how they'll hook someone else on horse racing this year. What was the experience that made you fall in love with horse racing? My way to horse racing was fairly unconventional. I grew up Washington DC in the pre-cable television era. Cable didn't come to DC until the late 1980s, so my access to sports was fairly limited....