Interested to see what you guys think of this, particularly STR..
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I feel national oversight might be a good thing ..how and is it practical to implement is another story..the legal part of whether it should be allowed to happen is a seperate issue altogetherComment -
I think that the spirit of the idea is sound. Seems as though the legal end of it is apparently not.
I am sure I spoke about this probably years ago but it really is not that difficult . The difficulty is getting all the various track owners on the same page.
The only way that will ever happen is with a commissioner. NOT individual boards in each state. But good luck with that. Cooperate greed will fight that all the way as will egos.
Greed is what badly affected the game in the 70's when all the owners wanted to race more often in many states , thus diluting the fields and creating a tug of war for horses. Over the years, we have seen a major decline in breeding. Not from the expensive group but the smaller operations. The mom and pop or family breeding operations. The horses that fill a normal days card.
I am not familiar with all the jurisdictions but in Maryland, it was simple economics. The purses were below par. The costs were slowly but steadily rising, that is, salaries, feed, equipment etc. But as all the prices rose, and inflation rose, salaries had to rise, but the purses did not. The Md. breeders assn. did not grow in money laid out for home breds when they won in Md.
But... land prices soared, especially in Balt. County and Howard County which housed most of the breeding farms. The average farm in those counties sold in the mid 70's for about 2,000 per acre. In 2010 they sold for roughly 57,000 per acre. Land was going and is STILL going wild pricewise. So, as generations moved out and the younger owners took over farms they could not pay the rising bills and the price of the land was too much to turn down. That is what happens when the State breeders Assn's. cannot keep up with pricing. All of that created a horse shortage but the kicker was, the tracks did not adjust downward with dates. The greed of individual track owners to compete against each other created small fields. Therefore less handle. And, you know the rest of the story.
The racetracks do need an integrity act type of law. How they get there is beyond me mainly because for the racetrack owners, sadly, it's IMO all about the money.
It is well documented in my thread about how bad things got with drugs on race days in the late 80's and 90's. It is miles better today. It truly is. But... without people who ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND what the various drugs are for and know what belongs in a vets car and what does NOT as far as racing day medications go it will remain , again IMO, a mess.
I saw a Lidocaine positive the other day. Seriously? Lidocaine. That has NO place in a horse that is racing. Period. Mistake? Nope. I call B.S. Oh sure, maybe for a barn that has had no previous positives, maybe, but a trainer with multiples?
That is for emergency use only and NOT for a horse that will soon be racing. The salve BS that has been spun all the way around the world, IMO, is total crap. These are the most expensive horses in the world running for the highest purses. You don't make mistakes like that and if for some reason it happens, when you have 20 or 25 more positives from previous races over the years, serious consideration needs to occur. Hell, it needed to occur on positive 2,3,4,5, much less 21,22,23,24. Jesus !
So with the current set up are we expecting a Senator from the great state of who gives a damn, to know how to judge a particular drug occurrence while having no idea how a barn runs and what is what?
They need a commission that oversees every racing jurisdiction in the United States. It should be made up of former and maybe current, I would have to think on that, trainers, vets and breeders who have the highest integrity. They should be paid very well. And they should act as a board, answer to the commissioner who hands down the penalties.
In theory, that is not hard at all. But with all the pushing and pulling from, well, every direction, until it happens, it will remain a hot mess.
That's my take Bucckandadime.Comment
