Letter To The Editor: Florida Breds, A Broken Program Or Just A Rudderless Ship?

[Wandering Eyes]

The Florida breeding program has a long and proud history that we all recognize is a major component of the racing industry in the state. Traditionally, we have been the strongest of the regional (non-Kentucky) programs, ranking ahead of California and New York despite our year-round racing program not being up to par with those two locations. Yet when The Stronach Group (TSG) took control of South Florida racing years ago, that status as a third-place racing state changed as our purses and handle numbers all trended upward while New York's were flat, and California's dropped.

While experiencing some growing pains as the horseman and racetracks transitioned away from a Calder-dominated schedule to an exclusively Gulfstream year-round product, the quality of South Florida racing on a yearly basis has improved. Yet the Florida-bred program and desirability of Florida-breds in the open market has not seen any gain and as evidenced by this year's huge decrease in the number of Florida-breds foaled, the entire program seems to be floundering. These aren't opinions, these are facts. Major reforms need to be made to the Florida-bred program including all facets; the sire stakes, the open Florida bred stakes program, the Florida bred overnight race program and the FOA.

We all need to work together; the breeders, the stallion farms, the racetracks, the owners and trainers and even the sales companies to create a Florida-bred program that is competitive with other state-bred programs, that rewards the breeder and owner of a good horse, that gives horsemen ample racing opportunities and creates demand for our product, the Florida-bred racehorse.

What should we do?

It's imperative that we take bold steps to remake the Florida-bred program. The time is now to refocus on building the Florida-bred brand. We need to create a racing program that rewards horsemen who buy or breed Florida-breds, that rewards the Florida breeders, that rewards the stallion owners and provides the racetracks and our betting customers with competitive content to wager on.

First, there must be an emphasis on creating the foundation of any strong state-bred program, overnight racing. We must work together with the tracks to come up with Florida-bred restricted maiden and allowances races to develop horses to feed into our stakes program. We should strive to have Florida-bred stakes of some variety each month. This will give our horsemen targets to point to, our breeders more opportunities to get black type, and allow our horsemen and breeding groups more opportunities to promote the positive aspects of breeding and racing Florida-breds.

There is still a place for the sire stakes races; however, we would be better served with more of those races better dispersed throughout the calendar. Grass races should be added to the sire stakes schedule as well as turf events are now our most popular types of races and are more likely to generate bigger fields and higher handle that the racetracks are looking for.

The current overall Florida-bred program is ineffective, unpopular, and losing customers every year. Losing a percentage of your foal crop is a crippling blow to any state-bred program and unless drastic changes are made, what leads anyone to believe this trend won't continue? It's past time for the FTBOA, FHBPA, the TBHBPA and the racetracks to come together to fix this problem and make breeding and owning Florida-breds popular again.

YEAR                     MARES BRED                     STALLIONS
2012                            3,155                                  154
2013                            2,994                                  159
2014                            3,024                                  158
2015                            3,057                                  145
2016                            2,865                                  134
2017                            2,311                                  125
2018                            2,078                                  117
2019                            2,078                                  121
2020                            1,842                                  104
2021                            1,626                                  84
2022                            1,552                                  86
2023                            1,478                                  75
2024                            1,329                                  63
2025                            963                                     61

That's a decline of 76%. Solution?

The solution is very simple, OBS is a well-managed organization with an established infrastructure that should take over the FTBOA. They should sell or rent the FTBOA building, and use that money for breeders' awards.

We need to restructure the breeding program in Florida; we cannot afford the decline to fewer than 900 mares and 61 stallions, the highest stud fee of which is $6,500.

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