The Week In Review: Some New Year’s Resolutions For The Sport Of Horse Racing

[Wandering Eyes]

Actually, 2024 wasn't that bad of a year for horse racing. There were no major scandals and the rate of horses breaking down fell again. At the tracks under HISA's jurisdiction, it looks like the fatality rate for the year will be about 84 horses per 1,000 starters. Considering that same rate in 2009, the first year statistics were kept, was 2.00 per 1,000 shows just how far the sport has come. The GI Kentucky Derby was as thrilling a Triple Crown race as the sport has seen in some time, with three horses a nose apart at the wire and Mystik Dan (Goldencents) winning primarily because he got a perfect ride from Brian Hernandez Jr. With Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) giving Fierceness (City of Light) and the rest of the boys everything they could handle in the GI Travers, that was another race that none of us will soon forget. Plans for a new Pimlico and new Belmont, two tracks that have seen better days, are underway, which will make the Triple Crown even better.

But that doesn't mean the future is bright. Far from it. There are still many problems that threaten the sport's long-term health. The latest crisis is California racing, and where is it headed with so many problems and with purses so low they can't even compete with Turfway Park?

There are no magic wands to get this sport back to the “good old days” but there are things that can done. Here are some fixable problems that racing can tackle in 2025. And if some of them seem trivial, remember that if the sport can't even do the little things right, how is it going to do the major things right? Consider these racing's New Year's resolutions for 2025.

Here goes:

–Deal with the CAW problem. The computer players are driving people out of the game, even some bettors who used to be considered major players. No one can compete with these groups who have the best data, have computer programs and algorithms that find underlays, can bet at the very last second and then receive rebates that are substantially higher than anyone else can get. The more the CAW players win, the more everybody else loses. The day will come when the betting will be wales vs. wales while everyone else has either quit betting or finds another game to wager on. That's when you can turn out the lights, and that may be closer than you think.

The problem is that you can't live with these guys and you can't live without them. If the tracks got together and banned them, the hit to the handle would be catastrophic. It's estimated that the computer players account for about 35% of the total nationwide handle. That's about $4 billion, $4 billion that the tracks can't afford to lose.

Without a full-out ban, CAW players will continue to chase other players out of the business, but there are a few steps that can at least soften the blow. Every track should do what NYRA has done, which is to ban them from the win pool. That way, no horse at NYRA goes into the gate at 4-1, breaks on top and goes to 5-2 and then crosses the wire as an 8-5 winner. That doesn't mean that CAW players aren't cleaning up in other pools. But at least NYRA players aren't routinely made to feel like chumps when they bet the straight pools. That's not a lot, but it is something.

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—Do what Maryland and Virginia are doing and create more circuits. There used to be a time when racing would move from track to track with Track A running for three or four months before Track B has its run. We haven't seen that in some time, but the Laurel/Pimlico-Colonial Downs circuit is going to be revived in 2025. Laurel won't run when Colonial is running and Colonial won't run when Pimlico-Laurel is open for business.

There is way too much racing in the Mid-Atlantic region and this will help solve the problem. It's a win-win for everybody. Horsemen from both circuits will have what amounts to year-round racing, the purses should increase at both tracks since the same amount of slots money will be divvied up amongst fewer races and the tracks will save money because they will be shut down for a part of the year, lowering fixed costs.

Circuits should be revived at a lot of places, but the most obvious place for it to happen next is at Parx-Monmouth. Let Monmouth have the summer dates and let Parx have everything else. To make it fair for the horsemen, the tracks will have to arrange for free or, at least, inexpensive shipping. And the state breeding programs need to be taken care of, which should be easy to do. There's no reason why Pennsylvania-bred races can't be carded at Monmouth and Jersey-bred races at Parx.

–Let's see HIWU catch some actual bad guys. The Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit never seems to let common sense get in the way of a suspension. We've seen dozens of trainers get suspended, many for drugs that likely got into a horse's system through environmental contamination. And most of these are people who common sense will tell you are not cheaters. Take Ohio-based trainer William Pribble. He hasn't won a race since 2022 and is 1-for-22 from 2022 to 2024. If he's a cheater, he's the world's worst cheater.

HISA has eased up and doesn't hand out provisional anymore for jaywalking. But Pribble has been charged with possessing Metformin, and for that reason, his suspension has not been lifted. The man's career has been destroyed and it's highly unlikely that he did anything wrong.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of dozen trainers out there that are still way too good to be true. Every handicapper knows who they are, but with very few exceptions, HIWU hasn't caught any of them. How about a bettor's advisory board that can make recommendations to HIWU any time they see a miracle worker work another miracle? The bettors are always the first to know.

–How can we consider ourselves a major league sport when we can't ever seem to get the running order right during the a race? It seems to happen every day and at more than one track. The naked eye may tell you that the three horse is clearly in front but the chicklets have the two leading.

There were plenty of examples Saturday at Aqueduct. In the second race, the No. 8 is clearly leading but the chicklets have the four in front. In the 3rd, the Gravesend Stakes, the running order down the backstretch is listed as 5-7-4 when the actual order is 5-4-7.

This is minor league stuff that wouldn't be tolerated in the minor leagues. It can't be that hard to fix.

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