StealThis

Suspensions shortened if trainers agree not to appeal.  Implementation of new law suspended to give time for compliance.  Horse owner with a pharmacy in his car’s trunk is ruled off for 30 DAYS.  Owner/trainer connections of horse beaten by horse with performance-enhancing positives receive the purse after 11 months–Gamblers who bet on the beaten horse receive nothing.

It’s way past time for the horse racing industry to get rid of its bad apples.  For good!  Wrist-slapping and nominal fines achieve nothing in terms of cleaning up the game.  Ruling offenders off for life and giving them some time in the slammer is the appropriate remedy.  Instead, trainers are allowed to employ work-arounds to keep their shedrow intact while they’re serving multi-day suspensions.  It’s like a chess game and the players are getting rooked.

Training and racing horses on drugs must be stopped.  The ho-hum attitudes of racing commissions must be placed in the public spotlight and the commissions need to be made accountable to the public.  The most recent revelation, that steriods are indeed performance enhancers brings into play another level of disclosure that needs to be made to horseplayers.  Horses racing on steriods need to be identified as such.  Horses that previously received steriods but are no longer being administered steriods need to be identified as such.  Horseplayers are being whiplashed by all of these applications of drugs and medications.  In jurisdictions where drug and steriod use is not being disclosed, horseplayers should just stop playing at those venues.  If racing won’t clean up its act then it needs to pay the consequences.

We need to borrow a page from the criminal-law book.  It’s the page that deals with three-time losers referred to as the “three strikes” law.  There’s no excuse for the administrative bodies that oversee horse racing to continue the practice of modest fines and 30-day (or less) suspensions for trainers (and vets) who continue to violate the rules.  I don’t have a problem with a modest penalty for first-time offenses.  But, after that it’s time for some harsh medicine.  And, if the harsh medicine doesn’t do the trick then the bad actors need to go.  For good!

Damn right it’s a tough stance.  It’s what it should’ve been all along.  People who can’t/won’t play by the rules need to get out of the game; and, we need to help them along that path!

Watch where you walk!

Aside from Education is there another segment of our society that receives more subsidies than horse racing?  I don’t think so unless you want to throw in human welfare.  Consider how entry into this business happens.

A person or persons want to own a race horse.  There is a myriad of ways this can be accomplished and the actual event can be complicated by state laws.  One thing is certain:  The ownership money has to come up front.  This is most likely money that has been earned from a non-horse-racing venture.  New capital to the industry.  The person or persons now need to be licensed in order to race the horse (it may be that the licensing had to precede the purchase depending on the state involved).  New revenue to the state.  Again from money that has been earned from a non-horse racing venture. 

To race the horse, a licensed trainer is needed.  There are a number of ways a trainer can be hired, but the most prevalent way is to agree to a “day rate”.  Depending on the racing circuit and the popularity of the trainer these rates can be anywhere from $30 per day to $60, and more, per day.  This means that every day the trainer is looking after your horse he/she earns whatever the day rate is.  What does the owner get in return?  Well, the horse gets fed and trained (read: room and board).  What happens if the horse needs medical attention?  The trainer calls the vetenarian who looks after the horse and sends the bill to the owner.  What happens if the horse needs new equipment or a farrier (foot and horseshoe specialist)?  Well the trainer gets the equipment or calls the farrier and the bill gets sent to the owner.  What happens if the horse needs to be transported from Track A to Track B?  Well the trainer calls the transportation company, arranges the transportation and the bill gets sent to the owner. 

We haven’t gotten into the actual manner in which this horse was purchased.  Could’ve been a private purchase, meaning that possibly the trainer knew of one or more horses that were for sale and helped with the sale.  If so, trainer probably got a commission of, say 5% of the purchase price, for his part in the deal.  Might’ve received 5% from the seller and then got another 5% from the buyer, too.  Say what!  Yep.  Happens every day.  You think only sellers pay a sales commission?  Think again.  This is the horse business!

Or, the horse could’ve been claimed out of a race.  Again, the trainer arranges to claim the horse by putting a claim form along with a certified check for the purchase amount into a box in the racing secretary’s office before the start of the race.  When the race is over, the new owner has a horse.  What happens if the horse drops dead during the race?  Hey, the new owner has a dead horse.  Hope his trainer told him about claim insurance.  Or, to cut down on the original investment, you could be part of a partnership.  Say three (3) partner-owners with $4,000 each instead of one owner with $12,000.  You know, kind of like the time-share deal you got into with your neighbors.  The one that nobody uses their time-allotment but you can’t sell it either!

How about getting the horse into a race so it can earn some money?  Well the trainer takes care of entering the horse in a race that is coming up and lines up a jockey to ride the horse.  More money is required at this point in order to insure the jockey can be paid (a jock mount fee) and that money is deposited with the horsemens’ bookeeper.  Some tracks require a minimum amount be in the owner’s account to even open the account.

Finally, after purchasing the horse, and paying several thousand dollars of miscellaneous bills, race day arrives.  Oh, the trainer called yesterday and said the horse would need medication before the race.  Say what?  Yep, need to have the vet administer Lasix and Bute.  Horse has been on it all along and we don’t want to change anything now.  The vet will send you the bill. 

Horse runs.  Horse finishes 3rd, which the trainer euphimistically refers to as “being right there” and earns purse money of $2400 (12% of $20,000).  The $2400 gets credited to the owner’s account with the horsemen’s bookeeper.  After a few days the owner contacts the bookeeper and asks to withdraw $2000.  Bookeeper says there’s not $2000 available for withdrawal, that after the trainer took his ten percent of the purse and the jockey took his ten percent of the purse the remaining purse money is $1920.

Owner complains that the jockey already received an $80 fee for the mount so why the ten percent? Bookeeper says that the trainers arrangement with jocks is that if they finish in the money that they get ten percent of the earned purse.  Owner says that the trainer didn’t tell him that.  Bookeeper says complain to the trainer, not to her.  The $20,000 purse included a $2,000 payment from a special fund for supplementing purses for races limited to statebred horses.  And, the purse was further supplemented by a $400 appearance fee for horses that finished lower than 5th and earned no purse money.  And, the rest of the purse money?  Well if there were no other purse subsidies (such as slot-machine revenue) then it’s up to the bettors.  The gamblers who have been making all of this possible for years.

Oh!  Right after the owner hung up the phone from talking with the horsemen’s bookeeper, the phone rang and it was the trainer.  Seems when they took the horse out to the track this morning for a little jog, the horse was “favoring its right front”.  Trainer said they would ice it down for a couple days and see how it was doing then.  Hoped he wouldn’t have to call the vet, but if the horse was still “off” after a couple days he might have to do that.  Of course, plans for another race would have to be put on hold for now.  Trainer said he appreciated the man’s business and would be sending the next training bill over on the 15th and said probably some time off would do the horse some good. 

So, what is the point of this long-winded story?  Try: You really gotta be DUMB to want to own a race horse! How much money do you think a person off the street could make in a setup like the one just described?  And, given that, how much sympathy should you feel towards people who jump into the business of owning horses and then complain that they’re losing money?  And, how much support do you think those people should get when they band (if they were workers would this be a union?) together and create work stoppages and disrupt the only commerce that exists from which they can make money?

And we haven’t even touched on the folks who spend 6- and 7-figures to buy year-old horses, more than half of which will never make it to the track! 

More money than brains?  Something like that!