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Unfortunately Mike that might not even in any suspensions. I don't think there's any hope for the game. I really don't. Bettors getting fleeced with high takeouts and no new betting options. From the demand side, yearling prices will drop big time this year as more and more people realize that if you don't have a decent horse, you're capital goes basically to zero. The costs associated with keeping a horse are astronomical these days and most owners simply can't afford to pay. Add to that the diehards that have been racing against the top outfits are done doing that as well. The amount of contraction in this sport in the past five years is staggering, so many tracks closed and few new people entering the workspace. If it was any other industry I'd say there's a chance but not how this sport is structured and governed and to be honest subsidized. It's over folks!
People need to call and email the commissions and governing bodies, the more noise and pressure put on them, the better.
Exactly, been repeating that all week. Even anonymously.
You have said it for the past few years, mostly on deaf ears.Some of us do actually do it. But more need to.
Screaming for names? Why weren't they BRINGING THE NAMES!?! Is it everyone else's job to support and fight for the industry? I always hear people say they saw this or that. Did they turn it in? Did they obtain the proof? Not even once. Which I do get because they're afraid. But now there should be THOUSANDS of horsemen demanding what I've started be finished. There has been a bunch. But could be a shitload more. Fucking fight for your sport!!!! You have the upper hand!!!!!
You think participants haven't been screaming for the past 20 years. The tracks are mostly owned by casinos and as you've stated on more than one occasion, they are a nuisance for them. They would like nothing better than to decouple and have horse racing out of their business. The few remaining ones that aren't owned by casinos either have Jeff or some corporate/Agriculture/board of governors running the day to day affairs. From them, Jeff is the only one that has really tried to do anything about the explosion in drugs. I give him credit for at least trying but am in concert with many on here with regards to his "picking and choosing" method. WEG is a rudderless ship, they let Moreau go for a decade without addressing the elephant in the room. The lesser tracks are less plagued simply due to economics, that is there is no sense in buying $500 of BB3 to win a race carrying a 6K purse. The local racing commissions specifically and the industry leaders in general are to blame for the decline of harness racing. Everyone knows that when you can't make it doing the horses, you run to become a race office scrub or apply to become a judge. From there you get what one would expect: an incompetent race secretary and an incompetent racing official, which only hurst the overall product even more. So until you clean shop and hire the right people to do the best possible job, the product will continue to evaporate, little by little, just how it has for the past twenty years. We're way beyond a reprehensible vet and a few scumbag owners manipulating a dozen gullible trainers. With the exception of the mid-Ohio market and Kentucky, this sport is heading toward extinction. If you just look at Ontario, the first place that had an explosion due entirely to slots, it took about ten years to go bust. Exactly the same thing is happening in New York and any other jurisdiction where purses have soared. Ontario failed on a level you can't imagine--if governed properly (see Hong Kong racing officials) and ran with vision, i.e purchase those B tracks of the casino companies for peanuts, hire intelligent people to product wagering and find inventive ways to get your product to the people to increase handle. But they didn't do shit, they thought it would never stop so why do any work. They were screaming for names back then too Mike, I could give you a few but why bother those that know, know. Now they're basically toast up there, very few tracks an ever-decreasing list of owners willing to invest and an attendance as low as a hundred people on most nights. But on a postive note Mike, I do have the fix if you're interested in cutting a new thread. Where's there are horses, there is passion and where's there is passion, there is hope.
