New York Racing Slipping, Its Bias Showing

Even after Sunday Silence won the Breeders’ Cup Classic, defeating Easy Goer for the third time in four meetings, trainer Charlie Whittingham wasn’t convinced his colt would be named the horse of the year for 1989. “He’ll have a chance,” Whittingham said. “But the New York writers are difficult, and the ones in New Jersey are no bargain. Time will tell.”

This has been a recurring theme of the rivalry between the two colts, with Sunday Silence’s loyalists insisting that he never has received proper respect because of his California origins. Whittingham grumbled that New Yorkers would hail any Easy Goer victory as a brilliant achievement and dismiss any Sunday Silence victory as a fluke. Indeed, Steve Crist wrote in The New York Times that Easy Goer would establish himself as the horse of the decade if he won the Classic. When Sunday Silence scored his brilliant, decisive victory, he received no such anointment.

The Easy Goer-Sunday Silence rivalry not only exposed a lot of Eastern provincialism, but it also reflected the declining condition of New York racing in general. Like the post-Copernican clerics, New Yorkers are learning that they no longer dwell at the center of the universe, but many of them still are decrying this truth as heresy.

Until the late 1970s, New York was the site of most of America’s definitive championship races. The winner of the Woodward Stakes was named the horse of the year 12 times in a 20-year span. But in the 1980s, the whole face of U.S. racing has changed.

The Breeders’ Cup has robbed many of the year-end New York stakes of their traditional importance. California offers more purse money than New York and its major stakes are drawing fields at least as strong as their counterparts in the East. Tracks around the country have created new big-money stakes as box-office attractions. And in most cases the New York Racing Association has not made noticeable efforts to counter this increased competition.

Consider the cases of the 105-year-old Suburban Handicap and the 2-year-old Pimlico Special. Both races attempt to attract older male horses at roughly the same distance at roughly the same time of the year. But Pimlico aggressively promoted its new attraction, offered a $700,000 purse and attempted to lure top horses from all over the country. In its first two years, the Special has drawn fields as strong as any race in America but the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

By contrast, the New York Racing Association puts up $350,000 for the Suburban and lets it rest on its reputation. This year not a single out-of-town horse shipped to New York for the race, which was won by Dancing Spree -- his only non-sprint victory of the year. In 1988 the Suburban drew a field of four; in 1987 a weak field of five. It bears no resemblance to the race that used to be a showcase for great champions like Kelso, Damascus and Dr. Fager.

What has happened to the Suburban has happened to race after race on the New York stakes calendar. Even the ones with Grade I status and noble histories are drawing small, uncompetitive fields. It is easy for a good horse to win them. As a result, New York has been regularly producing horses who roar through these famous races and look so dominant that the local media hail them as superstars.

Devil’s Bag was lauded as a potential horse of the decade as a 2-year-old in New York in 1983, but flopped out of town the next spring. Ogygian (remember him?) was hailed as a budding superhorse in 1986. And in 1987, New Yorkers denigrated Alysheba, who never ducked a challenge, and insisted that the best horse in America was Java Gold, who never left New York but looked so impressive beating a five-horse field in the Marlboro Cup.

Easy Goer is a great racehorse but he is also the epitome of this New York syndrome. His record in graded stakes in New York is a perfect nine for nine. In graded stakes outside New York he is zero for four. But what was most telling about New York racing, and about the Eastern media bias that Whittingham decries, was the period between the Belmont Stakes and the Breeders’ Cup.

Easy Goer’s Belmont victory had been a smashing one, but he still was one for three against Sunday Silence and had much to prove. But when he beat the undistinguished Its Acedemic in the Woodward Stakes at Belmont, he was hailed as if the race were still a definitive championship event. When he crossed the finish line ahead of Forever Silver in the Whitney Stakes at Saratoga, track announcer Marshall Cassidy hailed “New York’s horse of the year, Easy Goer.”

It may be important to keep a sense of perspective about New York stakes races next season, for Easy Goer might never again race anywhere but Belmont Park--the site of the 1990 Breeders’ Cup. Trainer Shug McGaughey said his colt’s first objective will be Belmont Park’s archaic Handicap Triple Crown series, which includes the Suburban Handicap. It already is a safe bet he will win it against a weak field, and that the Eastern media will hail him as a superhorse for doing so.