ThatsAmoreStable.net

The problem with having too much to do at the moment is that the world — discourteously — continues to spin on its axis whether I blog about it or not.  As a result, a variety of racing news of some import has come and gone without me.

The nerve.

Nonetheless, one post that’s been gnawing at me these past few days concerns the upcoming National Thoroughbred Racing Association “marketing summit” (see here).  A number of our Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance colleagues have been tapped by the NTRA to share their web wizardry in helping the NTRA develop expertise in marketing to a new generation (which, as a friend of mine recently observed, would mean any generation this side of dead).

To which I say, “Congrats, guys and gals.”

And also, “Godspeed.”  And, “Watch out for the icebergs up ahead.”

In truth, bringing in outside expertise of this sort is a terrific idea, which almost gives one hope.  Still, it’s hard not to remember what the NTRA’s previous marketing conferences have wrought.  Sample conversation therefrom:

Advertising exec: Our research conclusively shows that more people than ever before list horse racing as one of their 30 favorite sports.  We have now clearly moved ahead of watching the fat kid down the street shoot marbles, and amateur dog shows are in our sights!

NTRA gang: Well done!  (Handshakes and backslaps all around).

Improving racing’s outreach via the internet is a long overdue idea.  Compare the website of, say, your favorite baseball team to that of your favorite racetrack, and the differences become clear.  To say nothing of the more sophisticated sort of Web 2.0 outreach and networking, which is a phrase I barely understand (which probably puts me ahead of most of the folks in charge of racing sites, but still…)

But if the NTRA — and more to the point, racing as a whole — are truly going to move the meter in terms of public awareness and participation in racing, they’re going to have to face hard truths about the sport’s myriad failures.  No more pretending that everything is OK; no more pretending that fixing the ADW issue (which must be done) will solve everything, or that slots are the savior.

Of course, the NTRA’s biggest problem (besides bad marketing) is that marketing is only one portion of a larger problem that’s been decades in the making.  Even if the NTRA’s campaigns were spot on (which they’re not), they can really only make people want to go to the track once; marketing can’t make them return.  So, without further ado, three easy steps to fixing the problem of racing’s declining and aging fan base:

1) Improve the message — Racing marketing usually veers wildly between two poles: on the one side, the mystical “majesty of the thoroughbred” mumbo-jumbo, to which the average person offers a hearty yawn (trust me, I’ve committed plenty of that mumbo-jumbo on this site); and on the other, unkempt guys in stained t-shirts and Saratoga baseball caps ruminating on who they like today — exactly the sort of person most people don’t want to be and don’t identify with.  Why anyone thinks that either of these marketing strategies might be effective is baffling to me.

Here’s the thing: racing is a hybrid, part sport, part gambling activity.  It’s an activity that can have all the excitement of going to, say, a baseball game, while at the same time offering the thrill of interactive participation — something that no other sport can offer.  It’s both great sport and fun gambling experience — better than smoky casinos or boring slot machines or mindless lotteries.  You can watch sports — and if you’re lucky, make a bunch of money doing it!  And yet somehow racing’s marketing chokes the life out of it.  The sport lies there on the page (or the screen), lifeless as a dead mackerel.

Moreover, racing’s a hybrid activity that takes place where humans and horses interact.  This is a strength of racing, not a weakness. Think of it this way: when you take newcomers to the track, where do they like to go?  The paddock, and then the rail — they want to be right up close to the horses and the action.  So, what we do when we market it?  We completely divorce the people — the fans, that is — from the horses.  They never share a screen.  Why?

Racing needs to reposition itself as a fun day with possible jackpot payoffs — and at the same time it needs to capitalize on the human-equine connection.

2) Improve the product — Another problem that racing faces is that the day-to-day product is, frankly, unattractive.  We’re fed an endless stream of races run under esoteric conditions that are hard even for moderately experienced handicappers to understand, let alone newcomers.  Never-won-two, haven’t-won-one-in-six-months, never won one-other-than: it’s a baffling potpourri of racing conditions to the newcomer, and, more to the point, a series of races leading nowhere at all.

The American public will tolerate a long, seemingly endless season — go to an early August baseball game if you doubt me — but what it wants as a “reward” for doing so is to be told a story.  We want our sports to be a narrative, with a beginning, middle, and most importantly, an exciting and definitive end.

Racetracks should reimagine their conditions books not just as a way to fill fields, encourage betting, and make horsemen happy but also as a way to generate public interest in the sport.  And the way to do that — as I’ve blogged about here — is by having standings for horses at several different levels (not just the TBA’s best national horses standing, though those are good, too), so that many races each day count towards meet-long standings.  And at the end of each meet, top horses in the standings could meet in a champions day, with increased purses — a reward for horsemen who support the local program and a great way to create renewed interest in the sport by turning the endless season into  a story we can follow.

3) Improve the raceday experience — When I was a kid attending sporting events with my father, you were there to watch the game, and that was it.  You didn’t expect to be particularly comfortable, you weren’t going to ooh and ahh over the surroundings, and you certainly didn’t expect delicious food (remember the ultra-hard ice cream with the little wooden spoon things?).

Racing is still operating in those days.  The rest of the sporting world, however, has moved on.  For good or ill, attending sporting events — or casinos, for that matter — is now an entertainment experience, and folks demand virtually all of the comforts of home, with an endless bounty of delicious food and drink and friendly, helpful service.  We want music and video, bells and whistles — to be spoon-fed fun.

Yet most racetracks are older plants with limited food facilities, staffed by too many folks who treat you as an imposition.  There are any number of racetracks you wouldn’t want to take a newcomer to for their maiden voyage — and some of them are major tracks in major markets (as Aqueduct shamefully hangs its head, Pimlico examines its nails and tries to disappear…).  Just as a trip to, say, Saratoga or Del Mar can create a lifelong racing fan, a trip to most other tracks is more likely to chase the new fan away.

The bottom line is that until the tracks make a real effort to improve their customers’ experiences, no amount of savvy marketing will reverse the trends we face.  Of course, not every track can be Keeneland.  But every track without exception can be — and really should be — clean, freshly painted, comfortable, easy to get around, and staffed by friendly, helpful people.  That I (or anyone) even have to mention this is, frankly, unbelievable.

Through its own inaction and errors in judgment, racing as a whole finds itself behind the eight ball.  But there’s still magic in the sport, and way forward is clear.  Marketing — which racing (including the NTRA) has done poorly, when it’s been done at all — is an important part of the solution, but it is, ultimately, just one part. The world’s best marketing can make a person visit the track, but in the end, only the tracks themselves can bring that person back.  And that, for a sport which has spent the last 30 years and more ignoring its customers, is no small challenge.

STILL TIME, THOUGH NOT MUCH… To join our newest partnership, with exciting two year-old filly Homefire!  Shares are selling fast, but you can still get involved.  Check it out here.

A mid-August list of the leading first-crop sires — courtesy of the Blood-Horse — is a little like a message sent by the future to those of us stuck in the present, or, in this Olympic year, the first few strides of a long race.

The truth is that none of us knows who will make it big or who will fail. Horses of impeccable breeding and great accomplishment may go on to be leading sires or dreadful duds, while those of lesser repute may have a terrific influence on the breed. The very fast Mr. Prospector, for example, was a good but not great racehorse — and may be the most important dirt track sire of all time. And Big Brown, the dual classic winner who will be a pricey stallion, was by the middling sire Boundary and out of the retired-winless mare Mien.

Good stallions, like good horses, come from many different directions. Which is what the August list of first-crop sires tells us.

Of course, it’s much too early to know who will succeed and who will fail. Most of the first-crop sires have had only a handful of runners, and as a result, one or two successful horses can make the difference between a leading sire and a struggling one.

Still, it’s no surprise to see Lion Heart — a very fast, very precocious son of Tale of the Cat — atop the leader board in total earnings. With 150 two year-olds — more than any other first-crop sire — he’s already had three dozen runners, 11 winners, and a couple of stakes winners, including three-for-three Azul Leon, winner of the Best Pal Stakes.

On the other hand, what are we to make of Roar of the Tiger, the well-bred brother of Giant’s Causeway, whose racing career included just 11 starts through age five and no stakes wins? He’s currently sixth on the first-crop list. How about Alke, a son of Grand Slam, who raced just 10 times through age four and recorded only a single stakes win; he’s thirteenth on the list. Then there’s Roll Hennessy Roll, a precocious racehorse now standing in, of all places, New Mexico; he’s 21st on the list.

There is, of course, plenty of racing left in the year and, therefore, plenty of time and opportunity for some stallions to rise to the top of the class (and others to sink to the bottom). What’s more, the traditional way of determining leading sires — dollars earned by their progeny — leaves plenty of room for a single successful racehorse to dominate the standings.

Still, breeders like first-crop sires.  First-crop sires are full of the promise of greatness –  Spanish Steps, for example, is a full brother to super-sire Unbridled’s Song — at a fraction of the price ($10,000 versus $150,000).  And racing is a sport that runs on dreams and hope — even when bought at a discount.

So it is in Maryland, with three first-crop sires on the national list of 150. The one with the most promise is Domestic Dispute, a multiple-Grade II winning son of Unbridled’s Song, standing for $7,500 — second highest impost in Maryland — at Northview.  The market has responded enthusiastically to Domestic Dispute, and he has more than 60 two year-olds this year.

Here at That’s Amore, we’re letting ourselves dream a little, too, with a two year-old daughter of Domestic Dispute named Homefire. We’re excited about this Maryland-bred, Maryland Million-eligible filly, out of the stakes-winning, stakes-producing mare What a Gaylord — and we’re looking to share our excitement with some new friends.

Click on our Come Racing page to learn how to get a piece of Homefire — and join us in the winners’ circle!

The death of Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby brought an avalance of needed — though, at least to the powers that be, unwanted — attention to the treatment of horses in the sport.

In other words, there was a lot of screaming and shouting. One of the loudest groups, which is not the same as most informed or insightful, was the PR machine known as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

In racing, the harsh light of public scrutiny is leading to some long-delayed and much-needed changes, including new drug regulations. PETA, meanwhile, largely seems to have turned its attention elsewhere, to (presumably) more promising campaigns.

Like this one.

To put up billboards. On the fence that the Department of Homeland Security is building to control the border between the United States and Mexico.

To encourage Mexicans and other would-be immigrants to turn right around and go home. Because — punch line alert — as a PETA spokes-vegan explains, “We think that Mexicans and other immigrants should be warned if they cross into the U.S. they are putting their health at risk by leaving behind a healthier, staple diet of corn tortillas, beans, rice, fruits and vegetables.”

The tagline would read: “If the Border Patrol doesn’t get you, the chicken and burgers will — Go vegan.”

And the billboards will feature images of trim, happy Mexicans eating, one assumes, their healthy staple diet, set off against obese Americans gorging on high-fat, high-cholesterol foods.

But the best part of the proposal, according to the spokes-vegan, is that the billboards could be considered part of the national strategy to secure the border. The images, she claimed, “might even be frightening enough to deter people from crossing into the U.S.”

Which leaves us with the mental image of a long line of dusty, would-be immigrants reaching the border, stopping, smacking their palms to their foreheads, and turning back towards home. As they trudge exhaustedly, they think, “Gee, I never would have walked 500 miles to try to secure a better life for my family if I’d known they had Big Macs in Texas.”

Don’t, however, look for the billboards on your nearest segment of border wall. The Border Patrol has — somehow — turned down PETA’s offer.

A couple of years ago, Erin and I attended opening day of the April race meet at Keeneland.  As the gates opened for the otherwise nondescript first race, a huge cheer went up from the big crowd, an eruption of joy that seemed to say, “Finally, racing is back home!”

Maryland racing, on the other hand, is pretty much a year-round affair, with Laurel hosting long fall and winter meets and Pimlico holding down the fort for two months, centered around the Preakness.  The two tracks are roughly 35 minutes from each other, so the move up or down the road isn’t exactly a big change.

As a result, racing fans here don’t often get to enjoy the feeling of opening day.

Last Friday, though, racing returned to Maryland after its two-month Colonial Downs vacation; and a big crowd, enjoying free admission, cheap beer, and live racing gave the old track something of an opening day feel.  The track apron was crowded with folks enjoying the absolutely perfect weather, and the inside simulcast areas were buzzing with punters.

Some impressions:

Racetracks are a little like a high school lunchroom: everyone has their spot.  And even after a two month break, everyone returns to that spot, stakes it out.  Even when you don’t know the people, there’s a comforting familiarity to the ritual… Handicapping tip: Bet on Tim Salzman firsters in the baby races; his juvys are ready to run first out of the box, and on Friday, Live the Dash delivered a professional-looking effort to win his debut by a comfortable length and change…

Crowded paddock on Friday, a woman surrounded by a bunch of her grandkids, asking question after question, until she finally turns to me and another guy: “You’ve got the next question,” she says, laughing and pointing to me, and then turning to the other guy, “and you’ve got the one after that.”  Sure enough, the next question has to do with how the blinkers stay on, so I lean down and show them… A scrawny horse, looking more like a backyard hobby horse than a real racehorse, enters the paddock, and a woman next to me exclaims, “He’s really pretty.”  He’s not, and he’s about a million to one, and he runs like it… I focus on a big, flashy looking, well-bred sort, deciding that today will be the day his running catches up to his looks.  It’s not…

Punters are a funny lot, prone to imagining exaggerated connections with horses and jocks and concocting mystical conspiracies that somehow make it all seem right… A woman shouting to a winning jockey: “Good ride, hon!”  The jock, looking back with the most dubious facial expression, half-nods… A defeated bettor shouts, “Take down the one!  He was… running too fast,” a truly novel offense… A woman asks me which horse a certain jockey is on.  I tell her and ask if he’s a friend of hers.  She shrugs in the most “barely know him” sort of way, and replies, “He’s the father of my kids.”

Finally, congrats to bug boy Josean Ramirez.  The 21 year-old native of Puerto Rico rode his first official race on Friday, aboard Sir Classic Chris for 6000+ race winner King Leatherbury — third all-time in trainer wins — and he made it a winner, edging out What’s What, on whom Jason Nguyen was also making his first start.  Ramirez, who received the traditional dousing from the other jocks, must have enjoyed the experience; he repeated it in the very next race, running his record to two wins from two starts.

Injury lurks around every corner for our equine charges.  A bad step, a flying rock, a suddenly developed breathing problem — any of these can forever alter a racing career, a life, and all are but a moment away from becoming reality.

We send them out to race, for that is what racehorses do, and at the same time, we hold our breath and hope.  We hope for safe journeys, clean trips, and many happy returns.  We hope that every horse returns sound to the unsaddling area, that every jockey hops off without incident.  That everyone lives, as they say, to fight another day.

Which is not to say that we do not consider other possibilities.  I can see, too clearly, the day a horse broke down directly in front of our horse, who plowed straight into him, sending rider ass over teakettle; a smaller horse than ours, we were told, would not have survived the crash.  Ours did.  I can see a sound, brave filly, owned by friends, leaping over a fallen foe and landing on her head: dead on impact.

These are moments you carry with you as you travel this sport.

You consider how you might react in the situation.  I can remember a trainer moving with unexpected sprinter’s speed when his horse collapsed on the track past the finish line; in that case, a happy ending.  I remember a friend, suddenly missing, then located a quarter-mile away by the side of a fallen filly.

Even as we carry these moments, these possibilities, with us, even as we offer a silent wish for a safe race in the seconds before the gate opens, still we push them to the side when the running starts.  One moment, we have time, that greatest of all luxuries, to remember what’s ultimately important, which is to say life and death; and in the next, there is no time, there is only running, a stampede of horses and jockeys, an omni-present which overwhelms the earliers and laters that we carry with us.

A bad race, or more precisely, a badly ridden race, which is what our horse Kim received yesterday at Monmouth, brings with it a welling of frustration, even, sometimes, of anger.  A race that doesn’t go according to plan — in fact, never for one second bears any relationship to plan — holds within it enough whys and hows to last for days.

While we may speak of rage as towering, the truth is that anger and frustration are the small emotions of small people.  And if there be racing gods, we know that they take a perverse pleasure in pricking, as the old baseball poem suggests, our gonfalon bubble.

And so this, by phone: Jock jumped off in the gallop out… said he felt something slip behind… putting the horse in the ambulance.

A reminder: there are worse outcomes than running up the track.  In racing, there are many degrees of “bad,” and a bad race is just one, and not, by far, the worst.

Also: jockeys are brave and wonderful athletes who care about their mounts and who, like all of us, screw up.

More than a reminder, a deflation.  Anger, the most vigorous of emotions, replaced by concern, the most tiring.  Even in racing keeping your eyes on the prize means something more than rooting for a horse to win.

How do you handle it now, when you’re in Laurel and your stricken horse is at Monmouth, 200 miles away?

Only one option: to wait.  And in the act of waiting comes another reminder of the relative importance of things: the humans wait for the horse to tell them what’s wrong, in his own time.

These are not anxious moments, not exactly.  The feeling is akin to being punched in the stomach once: painful, air-sucking, but not debilitating.  The concern is that another blow will follow the first.

Always with horses, information comes in fits and starts, little bits of knowledge released from time to time.  This is the nature of the horse business, where tiny differences in movement or way of going herald major consequences, where trainers are paid in large measure because they can understand what the horse is telling them when the rest of us wouldn’t even know a message was being sent.

First reports, and a sigh of relief: he walked off the van happily, seems to be moving fine.

Later reports: he cooled out without incident.  No sign of trouble.

We’ll know more in days to come.  Maybe something will reveal itself when we put the tack back on.  Maybe tomorrow will be worse than today.  Or not; maybe our jock felt something that wasn’t there, or mistook a simple stumble or misstep for a physical issue.  Maybe it’s nothing at all.

The future will get here, as ever, in its own time, which is doubly true in a sport where time is measured in the fulfillment of equine needs and punctuated by moments that bring us to the highest peaks and lowest valleys.

For now, it’s enough to know that he walked off the ambulance under his own power and seems to be doing fine.  In a way, it’s a small victory; after all, the hope for a safe race is almost always fulfilled, so treating the safe return of a horse as a victory is almost akin to those youth sports leagues that give everyone a trophy for participating.  No great accomplishment there.

But maybe that’s what the racing gods were trying to say, after all: sometimes our smallest victories are also the most important.  There’ll be time, later, to analyze, discuss, consider what went wrong in the race.  For now, this — these early reports that nothing is wrong — this feels like victory.

Colonial Downs ends its two-month thoroughbred race meet tonight, and racing returns to Maryland with a mini-meet at Laurel, commencing on Friday.

The Laurel meet, however, begins amidst a growing sense of doom.

According to the Baltimore Sun, via our friends at the Paulick Report, the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association (MTHA) has announced plans to cut funding for six important stakes races on the fall calendar.  The cuts come for the simplest reason of all: there’s no money to cover the purses.  “Even with all the cuts,” noted Association executive secretary Wayne Wright, “we’ll still be from $500,000 to $1 million in the red.”

Another victim of industry’s financial woes will be the barns at Pimlico.  They will be closed for training, except during the spring Preakness meet, a move that is expected to save the Maryland Jockey Club about $1 million.  In prior years, the MTHA has made a payment to the Jockey Club to subsidize the opening of the barns for year-round training, but dwindling funds make that impossible for this year.

The stakes getting axed — with total purses of $850,000 — include some of the most important and historic on the state’s racing calendar.  Among them are the DeFrancis Dash, one of only three Grade I races contested in Maryland;  historic fixtures like the Selima, for two year-old fillies, and the Laurel Futurity, for two year-olds; and the Grade III Safely Kept.

The cancellation of the stakes is the higher profile decision and the one about which the public will care most, but the closing of the barns may, in its way, be more important.  Though the MJC maintains it has room at other facilities to accommodate all of the horsemen and horses displaced by the closing of Old Hilltop for training, some believe that this decision may be the beginning of the end.  Long-time local trainer Dickie Small opined, “People will leave and not come back. They can go to Pennsylvania and run for bigger purses in easier races.”

For several years, it was possible to dismiss the cries of poverty emanating from the Maryland Jockey Club as nothing more than the modern equivalent of the boy who cried wolf.

No longer.

In fact, thoroughbred racing in Maryland — historically, one of the most important racing states in the nation, with a glorious past that includes, in one way or another, many of the great names in the history of the game — is barely hanging on.

Purses in Maryland have been flat for years.  Stakes races have come and gone, with even key races like the DeFrancis and the Pimlico Special chopped in order to maintain the overnight purse structure.  And now, rumor has it, that the Pimlico spring meet — the centerpiece of the state’s racing calendar — may be reduced to as little as 10 days, from its current six-week stand.

Maryland racing, like that in all states, has struggled to keep up with changing public tastes.  The sporting dollar and the gambling dollar have both flowed to other pursuits, leaving racing nationally with an aging and shrinking audience.  Maryland racing has also suffered from many self-inflicted wounds.

But what has really exacerbated the problem locally — and brought Maryland racing to a crisis point — is the introduction of slot machines in surrounding racing states.  The three major racing states which share a border with Maryland — Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia — have all allowed slot machines, which have enabled them to boost their purses and enhance their racing product — all at Maryland’s expense.  What’s more, New Jersey’s tracks have a subsidy from the casino industry and New York’s will shortly have slots, as well.

In other words, all of Maryland racing’s direct competitors — the other nearby racing states competing for the same horses and the same gambling dollar — have a revenue generating tool that Maryland racing has been forbidden from using.  It’s no wonder that the state’s racing product has been falling behind.

That may change in November, when Free State voters will have the opportunity to vote on a constitutional amendment to allow slot machines, with tight conditions (check out the clunkily named For Maryland, For Our Future to learn more).

In the meantime, racing returns to Maryland with a palpable sense among horsemen that the other shoe may soon drop.

The dysfunctional road show that is Team Big Brown came to Monmouth Park yesterday, and they left with the biggest prize of all, the winner’s share of the $1 million, Grade I Haskell.

There, after the race, were the principals of majority owner IEAH Stables, Michael Iavarone and Richard Schiavo, looking far more relieved than joyful. There was jockey Kent Desormeaux, showboating for the crowd atop the sure-to-be champion three year-old. And there was trainer Richard Dutrow, looking for all the world like he wanted to twist Desormeaux’s head off his neck and dropkick it into the stands.

Just another day in the life of Team Big Brown. They’re a group that’s easy to hate in so many ways — and so many have expended so much energy doing so — but in one way, perhaps, they’re a metaphor for the entire racing business: a group of imperfect humans, bound uncomfortably together by a magical horse.

Yesterday may not have been the greatest racing moment in Big Brown’s short career, but it might have been his finest hour. For the first time, he went eye-to-eye with a horse who wouldn’t blink. But, unlike the Belmont, in which Big Brown surrendered without firing a shot, this time he refused to quit. When he switched leads coming off the turn, he began to bear down on longshot leader Coal Play, who ran the race of his life. Drifting out towards the center of the track despite steady right-handed pressure from Desormeaux, Big Brown finally passed his stubborn foe in the shadow of the wire, earning — really earning — a 1 3/4 length triumph.

In victory, Big Brown showed a dawning seriousness of purpose about this racing biz. Big Brown earned a solid 106 Beyer for the victory, but it seemed clear that he didn’t have his “A” game. The startling turn of foot that had left the Derby and Preakness fields in the dust wasn’t there yesterday, just a workmanlike willingness to keep grinding, to keep fighting all the way to the wire. Every horse, of course, has off days; the most successful ones fight through them, and that’s what Big Brown did yesterday.

And it is his success in doing so that will likely keep this dysfunctional group together.  The video feed from Monmouth Park was telling.  While the IEAH gang and Desormeaux exchanged hugs and high-fives, Dutrow studiously avoided them.  When Dutrow and Desormeaux came face to face, they engaged in an animated — and seemingly confrontational — conversation.  Immediately after — and moments before the win photo was snapped — a truly dark and angry look passed over Desormeaux’s face.

Dutrow’s questions, presumably, had to do with Desormeaux’s ride.  Though the plan was to send Big Brown to the lead and run the field off its feet, Desormeaux made a snap judgment to cede the lead to Coal Play, who, under jockey Joe Bravo, seemed intent on getting to the front.  The problem, however, was that for the second consecutive race, Desormeaux had to wrestle Big Brown back, give up his rail spot, and take him outside — an opening quarter eerily similar to that of Brown’s disastrous Belmont.

The undercurrent, however, is simpler: Desormeaux is IEAH’s guy, forced upon a relucatant Dutrow, who would rather have his first call rider, Edgar Prado, aboard the best horse he’s ever trained (and, likely, ever will train).  Desormeaux has seemed for the most part to be a stand-up guy, but his ego appears to be no small thing; “It feels so good to be right,” he said yesterday.  The IEAH guys are relative racing newcomers, while Dutrow is a lifetime racetracker from a racetrack family; none of them appears to want for ego, either.

There are so many possible sources of friction, in fact, that the wonder is that the team has stayed together so long.  The long-term goal for Big Brown, everyone agrees, is the Breeders’ Cup Classic.  It’s the next step that’s in question, and Dutrow has put down his marker, saying that he would definitely skip the Travers, were it up to him.  Of course, in things Big Brown, it most often isn’t up to him, at least not entirely.  Still, a mid-September race against older horses, perhaps on polytrack, would be the most prudent course.

Whatever comes next, we are almost certainly running out of opportunities to watch this prodigiously talented and now-maturing colt.  Or to witness the endlessly amusing soap opera that surrounds him.

If you claim enough horses — and in this case, “enough” is probably equivalent to, say, three — you’ll have good ones and bad. There’s no way to control for all the variables in the claiming business.

It’s safe to say, though, that you could claim a lifetime’s worth of horses without finding another Lava Man.

The seven year-old, gelded son of Slew City Slew, out of the Nostalgia’s Star mare Li’l Miss Leonard, was officially retired yesterday, the combination of declining recent form and developing ankle troubles proving too much. Steve Kenly, Lava Man’s co-owner, told The Blood-Horse, “We sent him up there [to the vet] to make sure he was OK and if not, we knew we’re retire him.” And so they did.

Lava Man, claimed for $50,000 in 2004, went on to earn more than $5 million after changing hands, making him the most lucrative claim in racing history — a title that he will almost certainly retain for a very long time. He won seven Grade I events. He earned a three-peat in the Hollywood Gold Cup and became the first horse ever to win the Gold Cup, Santa Anita Handicap, and Pacific Classic in one year. He won Grade I races on conventional dirt, polytrack, and turf.

His few forays outside the friendly confines of Southern California were mysteriously unsuccessful, but for three years, he virtually owned the SoCal circuit, winning at one point nine consecutive stakes there.

His recent form had tailed off, however, and Lava Man had lost six consecutive races following his third straight Hollywood Gold Cup victory. He’d earned placings in just two of those races. The writing was on the wall even before the ankle troubles were known.

Still, racing at all levels is a game that’s fueled by dreams. Even the most hardscrabble claiming outfit, toiling at the bottom of the ladder, dreams of the lucky lottery ticket; and Lava Man was nothing if not a lucky lottery ticket. Blue-collar turned blueblood, a horse like Lava Man — who finished second the day he was claimed, giving little indication of the superstar he would become — carries with him a sliver of the dreams of every owner. That, we all think, could be my horse.

Track announcer Vic Stauffer, who calls races at Calder and at Hollywood, is an announcer of sometimes unclear charms. His calls of big races involving popular older horses, however, are second to none.

For me, I won’t remember the Lava Man who struggled home last in his final outing.

I will, instead, carry with me the image of Lava Man inching past A.P. Excellent in the frantic finish of the 2007 Hollywood Gold Cup, and the sound of Stauffer’s feverish call in those final strides: “Lava Man… YES!”

There’s perhaps no finer tribute to an old warrior who gave us all permission to dream a little.

Our fellow blogger Teresa, over at Brooklyn Backstretch, suggested (here) a few weeks ago that she and I are, as she put it, “separated-at-birth siblings.”

At the time, I poopooed the idea as a suggestion that would come as news to our mothers. Now, I’m beginning to think that she was right all along.  The latest evidence: in her Saratoga opening day post (here), she mentioned giving a moment’s thought to Massoud, a horse who, seemingly en route to victory, fatally broke down in the first race of Saratoga’s 2007 lid-lifter.

Massoud is a horse who has some strong connections to That’s Amore Stable. He was bred and owned by a friend of ours, Ken Tomlinson. Ken is always trying to breed horses that can get a distance, and he’s bred mares to, among others, Swain — the (hopefully) father-to-be of The Big Four Oh’s prospective foal (here). In fact, Ken is one of the folks who provided helpful advice and endorsements as we made our maiden voyage into the waters of breeding.

Massoud was a son of Mutakddim, out of the Caveat mare Kass’s Warning. Caveat, of course, liked to go a distance; he was the winner of the ‘83 Belmont. Massoud ended up being a pretty nice but star-crossed horse.

He also had a full sister, a not-as-nice but nowhere near as star-crossed filly named Panjshair. Panjshair was the first horse that That’s Amore Stable claimed (not from Ken, though) when we grabbed her for $16,000 down at Colonial Downs June 2006. A couple of races later, we bumped her up to $25,000 where she delivered That’s Amore Stable Win Number One (see the photo here).

Panjshair had an interesting habit — and by “interesting,” I mean “really freakin’ frustratin’.”  She was a little slow to start in most races, but she didn’t like being pulled up at the end.  And she had a tendency to run off while returning to be unsaddled.  A few months after Win Number One, during one of her post-race excursions, the frightened jock pulled her up rather too suddenly.  The result: a strained ligament, and the decision to retire her.

It took a bit of work, but we found her a soft landing.  Unlike her unfortunate brother, Panjshair has a comfortable life these days, as a broodmare.

The horses are connected by more than blood.  Their names share a bond, as well.  Massoud was an Afghan military commander who fought the Soviets to a standstill during that country’s long and bloody war with the Soviet Union.  The area he defended: the Panjshair valley.

One of racing’s charms is these sorts of equine connections; the family tree of racing is remarkably compact, and every horse has a story. Thanks for stirring up the memories… Sis.

OTHER NOTES

My apologies to everyone who tried to slog through my last, paragraph-free post.  Some sorta kooky computer glitch, now fixed… We claimed Sweet Yamila less than three weeks ago, moved her from $16,000 to $20,000 company, secured a convincing win, and had the horse claimed away from us.  A very profitable three weeks — but I wish we’d kept her… Colonial Downs is in the home stretch, with live racing ending on August 6.  The action shifts then to Laurel for a short meet, then the state fair meet at Timonium, and finally, in early September back to Laurel, where it will remain through the end of the year… Class players were all over Saturday’s Whitney at Saratoga: two G1 winners in the race, and they finished one-two, keying a shockingly generous $100 exacta (which my wife nailed)… One person who didn’t hit the Whitney, however, was a guy at Laurel on Saturday, who bet not the wrong race or the wrong horse but the wrong track altogether.  Oops…

The idea of a commissioner (or, in some circles, czar) of racing has gained major traction in recent months among many who bemoan racing’s myriad problems.

Indeed, it’s become somewhat of a holy grail, a catch-all solution for everything that anyone perceives to be ailing the sport. Horse breakdowns, drug rules, too many tracks racing too many days, bad marketing — whatever the peeve, a commissioner is deemed to be the answer.

The commissioner concept as it’s generally been described is essentially a major league of horse racing. Presumably, the league office would dole out racing dates, set drug and competition rules, manage marketing for the entity, negotiate television contracts and so on — all the things that, say, the National Football League central office does. In theory, it sounds attractive.

There are only two problems with the commissioner concept. One, it’s not going to happen, at least not any time soon. And two, even if it were feasible, it’s unclear that it’s truly advisable.

It’s not going to happen because there is no agency or organization with the credibility, authority, and will to make it happen. Racing is a big, messy, sprawling family; thoroughbred racing is conducted in 38 states, under a wide variety of regulatory and corporate schemes — for-profit, non-profit, quasi-government bodies, state and local fairs. Moreover, each track has its own set of stakeholders, including the hosting body (and sometimes there are more than one of these, such as Magna and Oak Tree, both of which run meets at Santa Anita), the horsemen, fans, breeders, etc. To bring all of these interests together under one umbrella would require either a really big stick, a really big carrot, or, best of all, both. There is no organization within racing that has remotely enough juice on either the carrot or stick side to force these interests together.

That leaves us with external actors, and the only one of any real significance is Congress. Congress certainly has the carrot, in the form of the Interstate Horseracing Act; through the application of penalties and/or the conditioning of participation in the IHA (and, therefore, simulcasting) Congress theoretically could turn the IHA into both carrot and stick and force the states to come to heel under a single governing umbrella.

While Congress loves to require states to act in certain ways in order to receive federal funds or participate in federal programs — this is, of course, how we’ve ended up with mostly uniform drunk driving and seat belt laws, as well as many others — the commissioner concept depends on bringing not just states but numerous private entities into the “league.” Moreover, it would also presumably require any new players in the game to enter the league, which could get sticky legally. It’s doubtful whether this is an appropriate (or, possibly, constitutional) use of Congress’ power, amounting as it does to a federal directive to private entities how to conduct their business (and not just for health and welfare reasons), and, more to the point, it’s a political non-starter. Even if Congress were so inclined — which it’s not — 38 racing states provide far more than the necessary votes in both houses of Congress to prevent what would be a significant transfer of power from the states to the federal government.

Congressman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) has suggested in a recent Paulick Report editorial (here) that the IHA could serve as the leverage to impose minimum standards. If Congress does anything — which is uncertain, given a spotty legislative calendar in an election year and the certainty that a new President and new Congress will want to make a mark (which likely won’t include IHA reform) in the early part of the new year — that would be the route they would take. Most likely, Congress would amend the IHA to require the states to adopt minimum drug and safety standards for thoroughbreds by a date certain, with the penalty for non-compliance being banishment from the IHA’s simulcasting regime.

Even if it were possible to create such a nationwide league, whether it’s a good idea or not is uncertain. Advocates point to leagues like the National Football League to demonstrate the benefits of forming a league, but the comparison is inapt. A league for horse racing, the argument goes, could improve horse and jockey safety and welfare and limit and control racing nationwide (i.e., fewer racing days at fewer tracks); in order to do so, the league would have to have some sort of governing control over every track in every state (so, for example, it could mandate that NYRA close its tracks during, say the first three months of the year, because those might be Philly Park’s dates).

In point of fact, there is no league that has the sort of power that advocates call for. In his Congressional testimony, Randy Moss suggested, “Imagine if the NFL were set up to permit each state to field as many pro teams as it wanted, play as many games as it wanted all year long, and set its own individual football rules with no enforceable league guidelines.” In fact, while the NFL is not set up this way, football as a whole is; anyone can decide to create a new league at any time, with any rules they want.

While all leagues depend in part on creating an artificial scarcity of the product — there would be, say, more pro basketball teams if anyone with enough money and an appropriate building could start one — not one of them has the ability to stop new leagues from forming. Indeed, the NFL, National Basketball Association, and National Hockey League have all faced upstart leagues within the last 30 or so years, with the NFL seeing a new competitor every 10 to 15 years or so. Obviously, it would be virtually impossible for racing to prevent new tracks from opening and cannibalizing prime racing dates.

Moreover, the breathtaking diversity of racetracks and interests would make the commissioner concept virtually impossible to implement. The truth is that racing is less like a “major league” and more like a major league and innumerable minor leagues, and no commissioner in any American sport has the ability to control every minor (and even major) league that might arise. The major league in racing would likely include, say, the NYRA tracks, Churchill, Southern California, perhaps Gulfstream. High minor leagues — say, Triple A — could include New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Illinois, and the like. And so on down the line, until you get to places like Montana, where short fair meets are conducted in a few places. Harmonizing these different and often divergent interests would be virtually impossible; what’s good for, say, NYRA might not be good for Arapahoe Park. And the very concept of a league implies that the most powerful entities would give some things up for the good of the group; without major (and currently non-existent) incentives, it’s hard to see NYRA or Churchill Downs, for example, giving up prime dates because it’s Monmouth’s or Ellis Park’s turn.

All of this is not to say, however, that these are insurmountable obstacles to progress, simply that progress will be somewhat messier than we’d ideally wish. As I’ve written previously, the likely avenue of change is through a leveraged process in which major players achieve agreements, which then puts pressure on minor players to conform.

Ideally, all of the states which host Grade 1 races (seven by my count: New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Kentucky, Florida, Illinois, and California… am I missing any?) would enter into a compact that would enable them to harmonize their rules and regulations on a variety of issues; these would include drug and testing rules, competition rules, suspension rules and procedures, and health and safety of horses and people. Moreover — again, ideally — while I doubt any would be willing to give up racing days, they could at least synchronize their calendars to ensure adequate spacing of Grade 1 (or even all graded) races and perhaps to enter into cooperative marketing of major races.

Racing, as we all know, is a mishmash of fiefdoms with differing and often competing interests. Some of this is an accident of history, the result of racing’s unique development and traditions. But some of it is simply because, viewed in the proper sense, all sports are to some degree a mishmash of fiefdoms with competing interests. No doubt, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell wishes he could control all football leagues for all time; but he can’t, which is why there’s also an Arena Football League (a couple of them, actually) and, occasionally, a well-funded challenge to the NFL’s hegemony. The world is big enough for that, and when it’s not, the market imposes its own discipline.

So, too, for racing. The world is big enough to support both a high-class meet at Saratoga filled with expensive babies and a barebones meet at Yellowstone Downs, where allowance horses race for about two grand; if not, the market will make that clear, and one of them will cease to exist.

Still, the various sports leagues make clear the benefits that cooperation can bring. And while a nationwide racing commissioner for all racing is unlikely and probably undesirable, there’s nothing preventing (and much recommending) closer collaboration among the major racing states. These days, racing is a fractured, and fractious, lot, in which infighting takes the place of cooperation and coalition-building. That will need to change.

In the long run, perhaps, there will be a major league of racing, comprising the major racing states (which, of course, would still leave most states to their own devices). But that league will need to be — can only be — formed by the entities themselves, jointly agreeing to give up some of their own authority for the greater good. Change, as ever, must come from within; it can’t come from without.

Meanwhile, for racing fans fed up with a pace of change that can be charitably described as glacial, a suggestion: crawl before we walk. Rather than hoping for an all-powerful commissioner to save the day, let’s take the steps we can, namely, encouraging the major racing states to start to cooperate.