Our BDHC brethren on the future of harness racing
by John Berry
While members of the BDHC (Broken Down Horseplayers Club) aren’t particularly known for having a Harvard education, most have a “street smarts” education as their individual experiences in life over the last half century or more are worth the price of a Harvard education, itself, and maybe even more.
They all have one commonality — their love for any kind of horse racing where a $2 wager on a steed’s nose keeps the heart pumping and the blood flowing.
Some of their stories are legendary — like the one about the guy who kept betting $10 daily double wheels at his favorite track with the longest shot in the first race with everything in the second race.
Of course, he lost night after night after night, until, one night, a 60-1 long-shot popped in the first race with his probable daily double payoffs announced ranging from a low of $5,300 and change to over $45,800.
About three minutes to post, with his throat drying up and needing a drink, he wandered up to get one and, just steps from the bar, collapsed.
A large crowd gathered around, along with the medics, and one person rushed up, peeked over the crowd and yelled, “Is he alive?”
The medic turned and replied, “Only in the Double.”
It’s a joke, folks, IT’S A JOKE!
And there are countless other tails — make that tales — that make our sport the grand and iconic one it has become over the past 200 plus years.
But what’s not a joke is the crossroads at which harness racing has arrived as competition from lotteries has been joined by the proliferation of casinos, bingo halls, prop betting, bookmaking, internet gaming and, even, stock market trading.
And jai alai is making a comeback in some arenas.
But many BDHC members view the sport much differently than, say, 40-to-50 years ago when the 2:00 mile was sacred and a 1:50 mile was hardly on anyone’s radar until Niatross broke that beam at The Red Mile in a time-trial back 45 years ago.
There is still a lot right about harness racing, but there is a lot not-so-right, as some of our BDHC brethren have brought their thoughts to light in this Mane Attraction.
One such person is Smitty, a long-time retired school principal, who has been a fan of harness racing for over 60 years.
Smitty said, “The days of sitting in the stands at Sportsman’s Park 60 years ago were really great, and Roosevelt, as well. The [betting] pools were strong and provided value to us punters.
“We had an early daily double, win, place, and show betting and maybe a perfecta or quinella sprinkled in and some kind of exotic [perfecta, Big Quinella or trifecta) to lock things up.
“All the pools were really strong, $100,000 or more in the double with huge pools to wrap things up.
“Even when we traveled to New York in its heyday, we had great crowds on weekdays with the stands packed and, if I remember correctly, maybe a quinella here and there, an exacta here and there, and the big triple in the last race.”
This leads to yet another point that Smitty made, “The casinos don’t care one iota about the fans anymore, or the horses.
“They could care less about us… and I understand that the world has changed, we’re getting ready to ‘clock out,’ and they want us replaced with the young who will sit at a slot machine and play for a few hours. I get it, but don’t like it.
“Today, there are just too many choices and the pools are spread so thin that the only value we can find is if a pool is guaranteed.”
(On that point, as was succinctly pointed out by HRU editor Dave Briggs in a recent article, Gabe Prewitt was the master of that art and, also, squeezing the ultimate benefit with perfectly timed off times against all other tracks racing that evening.)
The World Wide Web has become a meeting place for those with viable ideas now that harness racing has arrived at those aforementioned crossroads with sites such as HRU considered among the elite.
As on-track attendance in harness racing has evaporated over the years, there are those that still care enough to come up with viable suggestions to keep our sport alive in print, including Briggs, Derick Giwner, and Ray Paulick, as well as those that contribute their talent on the air, for harness racing, such as Dave Little, Jason Settlemoir, Heather Vitale, and Tim Bojarski; just a few of the many others.
In recent times, others like Dan Kazmaier, Tim Finley, Steve Wolf, and a few others, have aired their views, but, sadly, their views have, too, fallen on deaf ears.
Kazmaier, the presiding judge at several eastern harness racing tracks, recently made a case for “clean racing,” and why our horses should race on hay, oats, and water.
Kazmaier insists that performance enhancing drugs “tarnish the spirit of fair competition and jeopardize the very lives of the horses we cherish.”
Finley has been on a crusade on this very subject seemingly forever but the problem is two-fold — money and money.
First, with the deals that the casinos, coupled with the legislative interests formed, the purse money was just too good to pass up for the horsemen, and that’s understandable, after all, money is king.
But money, being the root of all evil, invites corruption, and that’s understandable, too, and has infiltrated our sport, to what extent, we have no idea.
In just about every walk of life, if money is involved, corruption will follow and that was the case when the casino/legislative way of life invaded the purity of our sport.
With the tote board odds exceeding the typical 99 on the board, the performance enhancing drupes (PEDs) invaded with a vengeance with a likelihood that only a small percentage would be caught handheld accountable.
And that’s what has happened, because the second problem is, also, money.
The amount of money to clean up this mess is, quite probably, incalculable, with the cost of testing, surveillance, and personnel covering our industry — on and off the track.
It doesn’t seem like the casinos care about their tracks too much, either.
They do pour in millions of dollars to spruce up the casino to the nth degree, but little is done to the backstretch areas or to welcome any new guests with an inkling to come to a track.
Oh, there are a few exceptions but, by and large, outside of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio, not much is done to enhance one’s visit to the local racetrack, and they have their problems, too.
Over just the last year or so, the following suggestions have been made in an attempt to improve things in our sport — some trivial and some requiring huge undertaking and commitment — but none have taken a single stride forward, not one.
Among suggestions on HRU have been:
1. The “Fill It or Kill It” proposal
2. Time trials between 25 race minute intervals with prop betting (showing the horse’s true grit instead of the fastest time in a race while drafting
3. Fixed Odds Betting (eliminating huge shifts in odds on final board updates
4. Cut the number of races while increasing purses and number of starters enhancing pari-mutuel value and eliminating close-to-midnight post times
5. Mega-8 Jackpot featuring a $1 million jackpot
6. On-track pari-mutuel takeout reduced to same percentage as slot machines, i.e., 6 per cent-to-7 per cent
7. Futures betting on harness racing’s biggest races and prop betting on driver seasonal wins and dozens of other possibilities
8. Our own television network — 24 hours a day — covering harness racing around the world — North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand
9. New saddle pad designs with added, padded length solving whipping problem
10. Redraws, taking the unfairness away from these rare events
11. Open draws for best drivers
12. “Doorbell” style cameras installed every 16th of a mile on pylons assisting judges during inquiries
13. Universal rules covering all U.S. tracks and, possibly Canada, as well
14. Just like March Madness, create Hambletonian Madness, Breeders Crown Madness or North America Cup Madness
15. Accelerated post times by region, i.e., an Ohio-Kentucky circuit, Ohio-Indiana, Indiana-Kentucky, New York-Massachusetts, Massachusetts-Maine, Ohio-Pennsylvania, etc., and, of course
16. A commissioner!
Wolf chimed in with the first of a six-part series on getting the young set interested in our sport, a very important item with less than 2 per cent of harness participants under the age of 25.
Finley has been fighting the fight of our equine athletes who can only “neigh” their aches and pains with some paying the ultimate price as illicit medications take a toll on their well-being as the wars of racing rage against their building fragility.
Some say we’ve made progress over the past years, but, in reality, the progress might be like taking a diseased splinter from the world’s largest tree, a giant Sequoia.
De-coupling has become, yet, a continual looming threat to our industry over the past few years — not only to harness racing, either.
Calder Race Course is history. Arlington Park is history, and, adding insult to injury, not even history is sacred anymore as stakes are being re-monikered to keep up with the times.
After the Florida fiasco, along with what has happened in Illinois, what if the casinos and their legislative “partners” get in cahoots again and rule that casinos don’t have to fund racing anymore and legislatures say they have more important things to fund?
Many track purses would suffer un-imaginable purse drops if/when this happens.
Earlier this week, at one eastern track, with total purses for the night being $145,000, the nightly handle was around $480,000, which would support total purse payments of, roughly $43,000, an average purse of $4,800 for the nine-race card.
We cannot ignore the perils of the future and the few of us old-timers that are left to fight are getting tired — in age and of seeing viable ideas falling on deaf ears or, even more inexcusably, just plain ignored.
May The Horse Be With You!
