COMMENTARY : The Time to Separate Horses, Bettors

There is general agreement among New York racing folk that this is the time of year to end the season. Winter racing was meant for Hialeah and Santa Anita, for Gulfstream Park and the Fair Grounds; never for a wind-whipped patch of Queens hard by one of the world’s busiest airports.

Here, only the betting matters; no single race is more important than the combination of those in the Pick Six, no winner more important than the horse that completes the exacta. You don’t bet on a horse; you “use” horses. Here, between Thanksgiving and April Fools’ Day, the flavor of the sport of kings is captured in the silence of the self-service betting terminal screens that beam “Welcome to Aqueduct” in endless rows.

The onset of the holiday season brings no brightening of spirits at Aqueduct. Quite the opposite. All racing of consequence in New York has been over since early November and Thanksgiving is the last corner turned on the downhill road that proceeds straight to the depths of winter. The timeless, rich color and ceremony of a big day at Saratoga dissolves into a grainy black and white out of kilter with every definition of sport. The thunder of hooves is replaced by the sound of rock salt underfoot.

Racing during the cold-weather months was a bad idea at the outset. With age it has become entirely unpalatable. Day after utterly gray day interchangeable brown horses run in circles on a chemical-soaked track that allows the tedious procession to continue oblivious to all but the most cruel moods of nature. Aqueduct’s primary virtue: The inner track doesn’t freeze. Its only other virtue: You can get there by subway.

Few take the time, particularly since the Aqueduct station was closed more than a year ago in a round of Transit Authovity budget cuts. The walk to and from the North Conduit Avenue stop can be long and cold, especially after a losing day. This is the racetrack of the shrinking hard core. Every face is familiar.

For most, Aqueduct is a picture on a television screen at OTB.

It is easy to carp about the quality of racing in wintertime, to bemoan the seemingly endless supply of slow-footed, infirm beasts with talent that befits the harsh setting in which they compete. But it is unrealistic to expect anything more. Horses with futures do not spend winters racing into the teeth of gales in South Ozone Park. Take away the champions and the challengers. Take away the promising young horses and those who race best on grass courses. Take away the expensive horseflesh owned by those who fill Saratoga’s box seats. Take away the quality allowance horses and the highest echelon of claimers. This is what’s left.

These are little more than grist for the OTB mill, fuel for an economy that has evolved as a result of winter racing. Their meager efforts to imitate thoroughbreds translate into taxes for the state, counties and municipalities; into thousands of jobs, some quite lucrative, held by people who pay still more taxes. This isn’t really racing. It is, rather, a form of taxation resulting from gambling; a gaming business, but not sport.

The benefactors are few. The New York Racing Association claims to have lost $6 million during the last winter stand at Aqueduct and has joined those who have for years advocated putting an end to the winter meeting. It will be difficult, even if the NYRA is successful in its effort to acquire New York City OTB, which it claims would allow simulcasting of races from out of state as offseason fare and keep the flow of tax dollars constant.

It is no coincidence that the economic decline of thoroughbred racing in New York traces it origins to the establishment of an ill-conceived OTB system and the ill-advised introduction of winter racing. One demands the other and together they have inflicted severe damage upon the quality and well-being of the sport. One of the things most wrong with racing nowadays is there is simply too much of it.

If the key to closing Aqueduct in winter is NYRA’s ability to guarantee the various interested governments that tax revenues would not decline as a result, the real challenge would be to overcome the backlash from within the racing community. A cadre of horsemen, specialists in racing winter-grade horses, thrives on the purse money generated by a betting audience this large.

And winter racing has for two decades supported those employed at Aqueduct by NYRA and its contractors and by the horsemen and those who service and supply them. There is a good deal of money at stake here. Some would suffer without winter racing; lives would change and not without a bitter fight. But the trade-off is necessary and for the greater good.

Racing in New York would change immediately for the better were Aqueduct dark for these next three months. The dregs of winter, who are becoming the too deeply entrenched dregs of the rest of the year, would be forced to race elsewhere, since there would be far fewer earning opportunities here for cheap horses and hopeless New York breds. The main portion of the racing year would regain its exclusivity and significance. The bettors and their bankrolls would have reasonable opportunity for replenishment. Each season, like those of other sports, would have points of demarkation: A beginning to anticipate, a middle in which to mature and, after all these years, an end.