COMMENTARY / HORSE RACING : In Pleasing the Bettors, Track Television Brings Up the Rear

At the start of many distance races at Maryland’s Laurel racetrack, the camera providing television coverage is placed alongside the starting gate. Fans watching closed-circuit TV see a close-up shot of the horse and jockey in post position No. 1.

When the gate opens, this ground-level camera follows the field so that fans see the horses’ rear ends as they take off into the distance. The picture on the screen looks as if it might be a cowboy movie in which the cavalry is riding out of town. “I think it’s a pretty interesting shot,” said Rick Cress, one of the two control-room operators who select the camera shots.

It might be interesting, but it has the small disadvantage that bettors can’t tell who’s in front. They can’t discern if a horse has broken tardily, if he has been bumped or squeezed, if his jockey has urged him vigorously or put him under restraint. If the horse in Post 10 fell in the first stride and dumped his rider, it would be almost impossible to see. When the television switches from this rear view to the normal pan shot, fans might be sufficiently disoriented that it’s hard to tell which horse is which.

As the thoroughbred industry has placed greater and greater emphasis on simulcasting, on intertrack and off-track betting, the majority of fans watch races on television instead of seeing them live. Good television coverage never has been more important, and yet at many tracks it is getting worse. As tracks buy more sophisticated equipment and attempt to offer a better television product, they depart from a reliance on the normal pan shot, get too artistic and wind up showing less of a race.

The worst offenders are the television networks. Harvey Pack, the host of New York’s in-house racing show, shares the view of most horseplayers that the tracks’ normal pan shot is better than the networks’ high-tech efforts. “When NBC does the Breeders’ Cup with 14 cameras, they think the best thing is to show those thundering hooves coming at you,” Pack said. “We know it’s ridiculous. ABC has so many cuts (changes of camera angle) in the stretch of the Kentucky Derby that you don’t know when the race is over. There’s nothing better than the pan shot; it’s like watching the races with your own eye.”

Such creative coverage frequently has the effect of missing crucial action in a race. A few years ago, ESPN was telecasting the Haskell Handicap at Monmouth Park, where Spend a Buck was an overwhelming favorite. When the front-runner turned for home, the camera zoomed in for a close-up; you could almost see the whites of the speedster’s eyes. But when the camera returned to a normal wide-angle shot, it revealed that Skip Trial had already swooped wide past the leader and taken command of the race.

More and more tracks have tended to use network-style creativity at the expense of showing what’s happening, and the biggest tracks--such as Arlington and Santa Anita--are often the worst offenders. When the Molson Million was simulcast from Woodbine to Maryland, the camera angle was changed 13 times during a two-minute race; it was virtually impossible to follow the action.

Steve Nagler, who used to produce racetracks’ TV programs before moving to ABC, says the reason so much in-house coverage is poor is that tracks don’t take active control of their product. “The use of subcontractors to provide TV services places controls in insufficiently qualified hands,” he said. “You get low-end employees often making key decisions.”

Tracks around the country need a competent member of management to supervise their video presentation, because there is so much that can be done to make television coverage better.

High-tech equipment gives tracks the options to do plenty of creative things on their reruns: head-on shots, isolated cameras. Tracks need to decide whether a split screen (half showing a close-up of the leaders, half with a pan of the whole field) is a good idea.

They need to find optimal ways of showing horses in the paddock and post parade.

But before racetracks try to deal with these more complex issues, they ought to start with the basics: Don’t get artsy. Show us the race.