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General Category => Harness Racing => Topic started by: White Rabbit on April 26, 2025, 06:55:30 PM

Title: Death of a sport
Post by: White Rabbit on April 26, 2025, 06:55:30 PM
It seems like harnessing is heading down a death path.
What I don’t understand stand is we see all the positive, the D Meth which are clearly from the Ceremotal, or the Glaucine to go back or the Penimine pick your poison, I won’t even go to the criminal trainers who went to jail, or the Wire taps where you had trainers that admitted to giving EPO or giving Clotall that killed one . Those trainers whet not charged criminally but why did the USTA/ Hanover shoe farms associate pursue them like they did Diamond Creek and Yannick G.
Back to the positive over the last 10 yrs, all seemed to come down to who you got caught, Glaucine and Gabapten Had big names involved some of those named could not have possible used it, Burke Toscaono so on. Even though the NJRC found a bottle of Glaucine 6 months before on a search at Gateway. None of that should have, matter suspension should have been match the the class of drug .
I remember Gene Reigel got a Morphine positive in Ohio 35 yrs ago. His defense was I didn’t do it. Later that fall they were watching the groom who took care of the horse and caught him giving the horse a shot of Morphine. When he was pulled in and? He confused he has been  doing all summer cause the horse was lame. Groom was suspended and I don’t remember seeing him again. Now in the OSRC defense they saw right through it. They have Gene his 60- or 90 days I don’t remember which and did put a letter in the Columbus Dispatch that unfortunately Gene was the trainer and was responsible for his horse and the actions of his Employees.
That seems to be a long gone practice of race commission now and I believe that’s one of the biggest contributors to the diminish of the sport.
Title: Re: Death of a sport
Post by: Way to go on April 26, 2025, 07:02:57 PM
Police should be involved with the Meth and FUBINACA positives....why do the states turn a blind eye????
Title: Re: Death of a sport
Post by: AgentQ on April 27, 2025, 12:31:35 PM
There is no debate that the sport, regardless of the recent yearling sales, is heading for major contraction. For a variety of reasons, ownership is falling off a cliff so the supply side will undoubtedly continue to shrink. With the notable exception of Ohio and Kentucky, every other jurisdiction is in big trouble with maybe New York being somewhat viable. And I predict they will follow in Ontario's footsteps of boom to bust within five years, mainly due to zero foresight by the state legislators.

As for the demand side, well in a word, bleak. Handles continue to drop noticeably or remain stagnant at best, especially in Ontario where it's only a matter of time before Flammy and Georgian call it a day. Every race is the start of another PICk 5 or some sort of rolling Pick 3, absolutely grinding the small to average players bankroll down to zero in record time. All the while, management--for lack of a better term--allows CAW's to take a massive competitive edge thereby eliminating the once profitable overlay horses that were to be found if you put in the time.

I've been around a very long time and one thing jumped out to me recently: you cannot lose guys like Tom Joy and Charles Juravinski and replace them with indifferent folks at GCG. You cannot allow an org like WEG to be run by morons like Lawson, who basically has zero credibility and a awful track record at the helm. Down south you have Gural and the guy from Yonkers in a constant pissing match, with the horsement and gamblers the big losers. I like what's being accomplished in Kentucky and that's where I will be investing my money moving forward. They seem to love horses in that state, having three options to race, a plethora of quality horsemen to choose from and a licensing authority whom seem to put the animal first.
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