Dog Track in Florida Inspires New Idea for Harness Racing

The idea that could revolutionize harness racing in Maryland was conceived at a dog track in Florida.

Tom Aronson of the American Horse Council spent a recreational evening at the Palm Beach Kennel Club while he was in Miami for a harness-racing convention last month. There he began to formulate the notion of drawing post positions for harness races after the betting ended. The management of Rosecroft and Freestate raceways has embraced his idea, and will seek to put it into operation next month.

Aronson was struck by the unpredictability of dog races; odds-on favorites would regularly get bounced around and eliminated at the first turn. Racing luck was all important. What struck him, too, was that bettors took this unpredictability in stride: “A 6-to-5 shot would get knocked down, but people would shrug their shoulders and go on to the next race.”

The uncertainty involved in the races was not hurting the sport’s business. Aronson observed that the Palm Beach clubhouse was packed and, indeed, dog tracks in many parts of the country are booming--even in some areas where horse tracks have gone bust.

He drew this conclusion: “There are things that people in the horse business thinks are important which the general population doesn’t think are important. One of these things is the degree of certainty and predictability--as opposed to randomness--involved in the outcome of races.”

This is what led him to think that harness racing could stand, and benefit from, the injection of some uncertainty into its often predictable races. He outlined his idea for a last-minute post-position draw to Bill Miller, president of Rosecroft and Freestate, and Miller loved it.

If the new system does go into effect, the sport will be infused with randomness to an unprecedented degree. A bettor would put his money down without knowing if his horse might be breaking from post No. 1 or No. 8-which, in many cases, could make the difference between probable victory and certain defeat.

There is little doubt that casual fans and small bettors would like the new system. It would give them a chance to hit the kind of healthy payoffs that are common in thoroughbred racing, dog racing and jai alai, but are relatively rare in harness racing. A $2 bettor doesn’t have much of a chance of making a big score at Rosecroft and Freestate, where the median win payoff is $7.

Harness fans might also find the change gives them greater confidence in the integrity of the sport. The enormous importance of post positions breeds a kind of cynicism, for when a horse draws post seven or eight, the driver knows (as bettors know) that it might be pointless to tire the horse with an all-out effort that will probably be futile, anyway.

Handicappers and insiders will routinely say that a horse “isn’t going tonight”--that is, making a serious attempt to win.

But if a 2-to-1 shot draws post position eight under the new system, his driver may feel obliged to drive much more aggressively than he would if the horse were 20 to 1. Everyone will be watching him closely. Besides, the stable might already have its money down and be forced to take its chances from the outside post.

The key question about the new system is how insiders and serious bettors will react to it. Many harness tracks depend on a few big bettors for a great deal of their business. To be a serious harness player it is almost necessary to be a big bettor because the payoffs are so low.

Serious players are much more apt to bet $1,000 on an exacta returning 2 to 1 than to bet $200 on a live 10-to-1 shot, because harness racing offers so many short-priced near-certainties and so few logical long-priced results.

Those same players are not going to risk $1,000 on an exacta without knowing what post positions the horses will break from. They may protest that the game will be destroyed by turning the most important single factor in harness racing into a matter of chance. They may think that the sport will cease to reward rational handicapping and will bear more resemblance to a lottery or a casino game.

The reaction of this nucleus of players is what worries Miller most. Asked what he thought the biggest downside risk of the new plan might be, he said, “The worst thing that could happen is that nobody would bet. My guess is that what will happen is that some of the regulars won’t bet as much.”

What the regulars may come to realize is that harness racing hasn’t been ruined, but transformed into a better, more interesting game. The injection of a great element of uncertainty won’t make harness races unbettable; instead, it will dictate changes in the betting tactics of serious players.

Aronson was right to see greyhound racing as a model for the harness game. There is a small number of serious, successful handicappers at every dog track as there is at every harness track. Dog racing can reward rational analysis every bit as much as harness racing does.

But professional gamblers at dog tracks know that luck influences races so much that there are no certainities. Even the most self-confident expert would rarely proclaim that a particular dog “can’t lose” and he would rarely make a single go-for-broke bet.

Instead, a good dog handicapper will play many races on a card in relatively equal strength; he will spread his bets in various quinella or trifecta combinations instead of trying to hit it cold; he will assume that the good and bad racing luck will even out over a period of time and that his expertise will bring him a profit in the long run.

If the new system for the post-position draw goes into effect, harness races could be played in the same way. Bettors would be looking for overlays on good horses and trying to hit good payoffs, figuring that the breaks of the post-position draw would even out in the long run. The game would certainly be more varied and interesting than the current stultifying status quo, and it might even offer greater opportunities for profit.

Indeed, the profit potential already has been drained out of most harness tracks. As the game’s popularity has eroded and casual fans have been driven away, the remaining serious players are left to battle among themselves. “Our sport has lost people to thoroughbred racing and to dogs because of the low payoffs,” Miller said. “Our surveys tell us that. We are trying to do something to attract those people who have left.”

The last-minute post-position draw is the best idea anyone has had to inject a stagnant sport with new excitement and wagering interest. If it doesn’t work, it’s hard to imagine what will.