a few days back I noted that the sudden shift to small fields was perhhasp due to the track playing hard and lots of sore horses...not so. Outfits are leaving / not entering due to the imminent investigation of race-fixing by the state authorities who are on the backstretch this week asking lots of ? about Pat Pope (racing secretary - just fired by LAD (wihtout press) - and Cole Norman...stay tuned, but obviously be confident in the out of state shippers this eekend....cleaning up is hard to do, but AR is doing it - quickly.
This thread says Pope quit. Other resignations include the track announcer. Not sure if this is related.
http://www.thoroughbredtimes.com/todaysnews/newsview.asp?recno=63169&subsec=1
track announcer - who often MC\'ed events in the midwest (including the KY TBA recently - who by the way does a great imitation of all other announcers) would not be relevant...stay tuned.
I regret that our favorite sport may find it \"convenient\" to let people resign and forego (no pun intended) the inevitable bad press (which has hit NJ recently)...just sweep it under the rug. We may not know for sure if there is no press (where the hell is DRF?) until Mr. Norman does not appear at OAK next year, citing \"better purses due to slots\" somewhere else...
LAD canned the live bugler (me BTW) as well over $150.00 in favor of a local kid with no experience. Seems like the slots angle is not helping LAD. What, $150.00 is gonna break them over 3 days? Come on...............
LAD hired me for Super Derby 2 years in a row. They had no problem paying me what I asked. A year later they asked me to do all 3 days of opening weekend at the same price (1 days pay over 3 days). I had nothing else going on so I agreed. They claim to love me............
So I asked for $150 more over 3 days and got canned.