Travers Field Set

[pip4126]

I can\'t wait to hear what the connections of Mage have to say with regards to that performance.

[jerry]

He was soft on the board s someone had an inkling.

[STB66]

Yeah, was there w/my oldest son and best friend. Someone walked up to my son after the second breakdown and said \"wow that really let the air out of this place, huh?\" Went to cash out for the day w/grizzled teller (I like to bet w/tellers the few times a year I play in person). He said, \"wow I can\'t keep watching this, what the hell is going on?\" Multiple young guys (20s, maybe early 30s) comforting their shaken/ashen/in some cases crying girlfriends/dates.

Took my son to the track for the first time on one of those old \"open house\" days back in 1999 when he was six months old. Never forget the look of joyous wonder on his baby face when the horses ran by us during one of those abbreviated races (Wait Trials?). Been going myself since the 1980s. Yeah, I know, we\'re nobodies, not the insider crowd, I\'m a guy who\'s never won more than $15000 (once) or lost more than $500 (a few times) in a single day. But we are also the sort of people who have kept the stands and the backyard here filled over the last forty years, as it rose from its near-death experience of the 60s and 70s.

I\'m no animal loon, as I have heard them referred to. I\'ll eat meat until the day I die. And I have had it w/this new American dog-worship obsession, as hapless self-absorbed owner-dupes stand by idly, smiling like simps as their precious unleashed dogs run through the \"you must leash your dogs here\" woods while they climb up on me, ruin a shirt in a couple cases. And the disgusting,  laughing apology, \"oh he\'s such a good boy don\'t worry,\" which only forces me to go into full large, medieval gruff guy to make my \"get your f\'ing dog off me before I kick your ass\" mode. My wife got bit while jogging a few weeks ago and she wouldn\'t tell me where exactly it happened because she feared I\'d try to get the mutt put down.

I digress, but not really. Because if a guy like me, not especially warm and fuzzy about animals, and desperate to hold onto precious memories and to retreat into some magical, golden-hued past, if a guy like me gets the shakes after today, well...sitting right on the dividing line between what used to be the old grandstand and the old clubhouse, watching with a crowd of 40,000 that went from screaming in anticipation to gasping in horror after seeing a horse essentially explode right in front of our eyes...was just one of those brutal reminders that the old days are gone. People are less and less apt to just throw up their hands and say so be it at that sight than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago. And there\'s lots of things they - we - can bet on where the participants choose to be there, and are much less likely to die on the field.

I\'ve loved this game for more than three quarters of my conscious life, but today, man, seeing the game look that bad, in front of that many people, in front of that many casual observers...my buddy turned to me on our way out and laughingly said, so what\'s the O/U on years of this left? And I\'m not sure where that number lies exactly, but, at least this afternoon, it felt like the smart play would be on the under.

[TGJB]

Don't know who you are, but some kinda post.

[statuette]

I never knew what some people felt when they saw the ruffian match race till today..

[Fredd]

I don't know if it was in the same part of the track but I believe it was in the same part of the race. A young horse that is running that fast needs to have a nuclear scintigraph in between races. Poor spectators, poor owner and poor trainer.
Fred D

[jerry]

Umm, maybe just an oversight but...poor horse.

[jerry]

I'm sure you felt it. Anyone who has been with this sport for any length of time felt it.  We love the game but we love the animals too. And when something like this happens it makes the game less fun. I would have been ok if they'd canceled the rest of the card. Watching Echo Zulu in the next race wasn't fun. It was worrisome. Scary. Downstate, horse racing could be a little rough around the edges. Not upstate. Not before. It was a happy place. This wasn't the storyline. This is the storyline now. This will be how this summer's meet will be remembered. Remembered by me anyway. I kind of wish I'd tapped out today so I wouldn't have a reason to come back tomorrow.

[STB66]

\"This is the storyline now.\"

I used to get stray $hit about loving racing from people once in a great while - and a lot of that was more from old fuddy-duddys who thought gambling was the work of SATAN than people who cared if horses got hurt along the way. Mostly, people up here either were avid fans or at least grateful for what the track brought to the economy here. (For the record, despite a couple years spent in the Bronx during my diaper years, I was bred, born, raised, have lived most of my life, and for 100% sure will die and be buried in my beloved Saratoga County, New York). Upstate New York pretty much turned into a post-industrial shitscape fifty-ish years ago; the Spa coming back to life served a source of civic pride, and, starting in the early 1990s, as the main driver of ever-rising real estate values in Saratoga Springs and to a lesser but still important extent to most of the rest of the county.

People were either in to it or didn\'t care either way. But more and more over the past few years I have caught so many more negative comments from the didn\'t care either way crowd. Many of the born-and-bred natives would of course be horrified to see the value of their properties sink if/when the track closes shop, but just as I have my own cognitive dissonance about the track, they have their own about why the houses they own now would carry far less value than they do if Saratoga Race Course hadn\'t turned into the behemoth it is today.

But people now, up here anyway, are perfectly willing to bite the hand that has fed them well for the past thirty years. Even the local news outlets, once reliable sources of relentless track boosterism, now publish the latest equine fatality front and center, whereas they\'d once ignore it. Horses died up here in 1992, too; but you\'d never see a local news station or paper come out with a lead story like the one titled \"Deaths in two earlier races cast a pall over over Travers Day at Saratoga Race Course\" at the top of WRGB\'s page tonight. In 1992, the story would have been titled something like \"Spa City swells by thousands as Arcangelo dominates Travers.\"

This - the disasters on the track - is indeed the story now. And like it or not we can\'t will it away by yelling \"PETA LOONZZ\" or whatever. People I know who wouldn\'t piss on PETA if it was on fire are coming to me asking, you like racing, so WTF is going on over there?

[TMW]

Rumor from California -- racing at Saratoga may be cancelled tomorrow? Good source. Not sure though.

[STB66]

It\'s indicative of the way popular opinion is turning - twenty years ago it would have been biz as usual tomorrow. And my hands ain\'t free of blood in that either because I woulda been there and saying, yeah, too bad about yesterday, but this 10-1 shot in the 8th is interesting. They know they have a PR disaster on their hands and they know they gotta at least LOOK like they are doing something about it. It\'s not beyond the realm that general public opinion sees the game as an exercise in animal cruelty and turns against it to the point where it is no longer politically feasible to support the sorts of subsidies that keep the game afloat. I kinda ranted against dogs and their owners earlier tonight but the attempted point was, the public has anthropomorphized animals to a level never seen before in this society. When they see a video of a racehorse going down like it a bomb had detonated from within its stomach, they may collectively decide that hey, this is an endeavor that needs to go.

[pip4126]

The New York Racing Association said Saturday night that it would convene an emergency meeting of New York State Gaming Commission and Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority officials before deciding to run Saratoga\'s Sunday card following two additional horse deaths on the Saturday card.

On Saturday, Nobel, a 4-year-old horse making his first start in the U.S., broke down during the run-out of the fifth race, becoming the fifth horse at the Saratoga meet to suffer a catastrophic musculoskeletal injury during a turf race. Then, in the H. Allen Jerkens Memorial Stakes four races later, New York Thunder suffered a horrific catastrophic breakdown in front of the grandstand when leading in deep stretch. The injury also required euthanasia.

Did anyone hear anything mentioned on FOX about Nobel breaking down?

[sand1trap]

Yes-a short word coming back from commercial break. I could be wrong but I believe it was apprx 30 min after.

[johnnym]

Don't get me wrong what I have witnessed the last couple of weeks turned my stomach like many of us.

I ask when babies are producing over 200 babies a year, then their babies are producing over 200 babies a year over numerous years that just can't be good for the breed.

My 2 cents no breeding until a horse is at least 5 a full mature animal.
No more than a 100 babies a year.

I'll be on the sidelines until the BCC.

Good Luck
John

[P-Dub]

pip4126 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Did anyone hear anything mentioned on FOX about
> Nobel breaking down?


When a horse doesn\'t break down in front of millions of eyes, they did what they normally do.........they barely mentioned it.

Wolf snuck in a 20 second comment after the 6th race, as they were going into a break, read from a script with zero emotion.  It was fucking pathetic.