THOROUGHBRED RACING : Sport Going Round in Circles

You should make racing more appealing to young fans from a competitive and horsemanship standpoint rather than from a purely gambling standpoint.

--ALLEN JERKENS, trainer

I’d like to see racing back the way it was. Go back to the day when you put on a good show and let the business take care of itself. The whole tone of racing is catering to people who think of it only as a gambling game. It’s a business now, not a sport.

--CHARLES HATTON, Daily Racing Form

Improvements? The impossible dream. More emphasis on the sporting aspect of racing as opposed to financial. Abandonment of gimmick wagering. Higher standards for the appointment and approval of stewards by racing commissions.

--KEENE DAINGERFIELD, steward

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Recent comments about the state of racing? No, this is a sampling of remarks from a 1974 issue of Turf and Sport Digest.

This Sunday in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., some more of racing’s most prominent people--many of them captains of industry, successes in other fields--will recycle what was being said to save the sport almost 20 years ago. The occasion is the 40th annual Jockey Club Round Table Conference at the National Museum of Racing, a gathering that is as stodgy as it sounds.

Last year’s hot subject was how the absence of a national drug and medication policy detracts from racing’s credibility; this year, the main event is titled, “The Future of the Thoroughbred Breeding Industry.”

Racing is in free-fall right now, on a suicide leap that is accompanied by too much talk and not enough of a grand plan. It’s impossible to have such a plan when the industry’s leaders can agree that the Kentucky Derby is run on the first Saturday in May and not much else.

Not that long ago, racing feared the competition from bookmakers. Now the tracks are the bookmakers, the legal kind, taking bets at off-track sites in the name of bringing the product to the customer. New York, the pioneer, couldn’t get it right, and California has refined the system, but all it has really done is give the game a safety net during a recession. Has one newcomer to racing ever wandered into a satellite center and signed up for the sport for life?

Far too often, racing has to be hit with an avalanche before it reacts. It took an over-reaching maverick, Bob Brennan at Garden State Park, to galvanize the Triple Crown tracks, bringing them into the century they live in.

The American Championship Racing Series, the third-best thing to come along in recent years--the Breeders’ Cup and the Triple Crown bonus are the first two--made so much sense that some of the country’s most prestigious tracks, including Santa Anita, are about to scuttle it, or at least dilute it to a level of insignificance.

Of course, any sport that is forced to play ball with state governments faces two strikes before it picks up the bat. John Russell, the trainer, said something apt at Del Mar the other day: “Don’t these politicians realize that for every horse that makes it to the track, about 10 people are employed?”

The industry, flooded with horses that fewer people want to buy, has belatedly launched a national campaign to interest new investors. For more than a decade, the breeding business skated on deceptively safe ice, thriving because of the bulging egos and deep pockets of the oil-rich sheiks, a few Europeans and a handful of Americans.

Now, all of these players are retrenching.

Racing could have used an infusion of equine talent in 1992. The season is reeling toward a lackluster Breeders’ Cup that apparently will be held at Gulfstream Park after months of pussyfooting by Florida legislators.

The racing depth is so shallow that Thoroughbred Racing Communications’ weekly poll of the top 10 horses must be padded by the inclusion of Best Pal, who is probably out for the year; Sea Cadet, unraced since April; Fly Till Dawn, idle for more than three months, and Tight Spot, whose Sunday start at Del Mar will be only his third of the year. The voters long ago lost interest in the Triple Crown heroes, Derby winner Lil E. Tee having been given the rest of the year off and Preakness winner Pine Bluff on his way to a stud career.

After Sunday’s Round Table at Saratoga Springs, the next all-out brain-pick is at the University of Arizona in December. Last year, the Tucson transcripts ran 326 pages. Single-spaced.

Horse Racing Notes

Flawlessly and Kostroma will be joined by six other fillies and mares when they resume their rivalry Saturday in the $300,000 Ramona Handicap at Del Mar. Included in the field for the 1 1/8-mile grass race is Campagnarde, who won the Ramona a year ago. Since then, Campagnarde is winless in eight starts. Polemic drew the inside post and will be ridden by Gary Stevens with a weight assignment of 116 pounds. After them, in post-position order, come Campagnarde, 114 pounds, ridden by Pat Valenzuela; Explosive Ele, 114, Eddie Delahoussaye; Flawlessly, 123, Chris McCarron; Kostroma, 123, Kent Desormeaux; Guiza, 113, Corey Nakatani; Re Toss, 115, Alex Solis, and Silvered, 114, Paul Atkinson. Charlie Whittingham trains Flawlessly and Campagnarde; Kostroma and Explosive Ele both come from Gary Jones’ barn, and Bobby Frankel will saddle both Polemic and Guiza, but the horses have different owners and none will be coupled. . . . Belmont Stakes winner A.P. Indy, whose goal is the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Gulfstream Park on Oct. 31, has resumed serious training and worked three furlongs at Del Mar last Monday in :36 4/5.