Next year's BC also at Santa Anita?

[fkach]

I agree that all synthetics are not alike, but they are alike in one very important way. They aren\'t dirt and form does not translate nearly as well from dirt to synthetic as it does on various dirt surfaces.

I\'m not some hot shot owner, but if I was in that position and I had a top dirt horse, there is very little chance I would ship from NY out to SA for a BC \"dirt\" race unless I already had strong evidence my horse liked synthetics. Why risk the horse\'s reputation and value?  If he loses, people won\'t be as willing to  acknowledge that he may not have liked the surface the way they would if I took a shot on turf.

The same goes for prepping for the Triple Crown. I might run at SA once. I certainly would be willing train there, but the SA Derby would be totally out of the question. I\'d want to know exactly where my horse was and how much ability he had on dirt before making any decisions about the Derby. Why complicate the training and the information you have with synthetic form?

Heck, if I owned Hysterical Lady or Lava Man and intended on running them I\'d be on the phone with new trainers getting ready to ship them out of town.

[trackjohn]

Richie:

 Unbelievable!!! Mike was the Raiders #1 pick in 71\'...I played baseball on SI with Mike prior to him attending Villanova. BTW his brother Dan, was a very good handicapper back in the mid-70\'s!!

[dodie]

Or is it how to succeed at racetrack management by doing everything you can to eff things up and demonstrate your arrogance, hubris, and incompetence.  How do you get the plum (arguably, but it is the only race meeting that isn\'t based at one specific track) Breeder\'s Cup meeting at your track?  Twice in a row?  Simply demonstrate your incompetence installing a new racing surface.  Hell, we\'ll even give it to you an unprecedented 2 years in a row.  We\'ll even announce the decision while you\'re trying to correct your mistakes.  That way, the general media can shine a spotlight on how dysfunctional the industry is.  Not only can they not install a racing surface correctly, but we\'ll reward them for it!   Talk about drawing attention to your mistakes!  Couldn\'t they have waited even 2 weeks to announce SA got the BC again?  At least the SA management could\'ve had the opportunity to show they\'d corrected their mistakes.  Horse racing makes the Bluth\'s look like the model family.
  Lone Star, why did you go to all that effort to get the BC?  You should\'ve just replaced your grass course with broken glass and the BC would\'ve awarded you the BC in perpetuity.

[Thehoarsehorseplayer]

Maybe the logic is: the angrier you get at track management, the more you realize the only reason to be in this game is to make a lot of money, which forces you to bet more money to justify your participation, which boosts the handle.

Somewhere track executives sit around laughing, \"Hate us?  Bet their sweet little asses the public hates us.\"

[P-Dub]

fkach Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I agree that all synthetics are not alike, but
> they are alike in one very important way. They
> aren\'t dirt and form does not translate nearly as
> well from dirt to synthetic as it does on various
> dirt surfaces.

Hollywood didn\'t get a new horse population when they switched surfaces.  I didn\'t notice many horses not translating form there.  Thought the track was pretty fair, and not a front runners paradise.
>
> I\'m not some hot shot owner, but if I was in that
> position and I had a top dirt horse, there is very
> little chance I would ship from NY out to SA for a
> BC \"dirt\" race unless I already had strong
> evidence my horse liked synthetics. Why risk the
> horse\'s reputation and value?  If he loses, people
> won\'t be as willing to  acknowledge that he may
> not have liked the surface the way they would if I
> took a shot on turf.

Why not?? Why would people not acknowledge the potential dislike for the surface switch??  You already have with your Hysterical Lady/Lava Man references.  Skipping the Breeders\' Cup?? Not gonna happen.
>
> The same goes for prepping for the Triple Crown. I
> might run at SA once. I certainly would be willing
> train there, but the SA Derby would be totally out
> of the question. I\'d want to know exactly where my
> horse was and how much ability he had on dirt
> before making any decisions about the Derby. Why
> complicate the training and the information you
> have with synthetic form?

Agreed,  only because of the poor condition of the current surface.
>
> Heck, if I owned Hysterical Lady or Lava Man and
> intended on running them I\'d be on the phone with
> new trainers getting ready to ship them out of
> town.

Current surface problems have been well chronicled.  Times are a joke.  But if properly installed, the jury is still out as to whether or not they can run on Cushion.  With large purses and GR 1 status up for grabs, not sure if I would. Whens the last time LM shipped well??

Fkach, I love your passion on this subject.  But at times you seem to let emotion rule your thoughts.

Richiebee,
Siani was a solid 3rd receiver, didn\'t drop many. Wasn\'t he a Villanova guy?? I attended hundreds of A\'s/Raider games in the 70\'s.  The \'74 playoff game against Miami (famous Sea of Hands catch) still ranks as the greatest game I\'ve seen in person. I still remember that day as if it were yesterday.

Going to SA for the guys annual Big Cap trip,  will they have the surface changed by then??

[BitPlayer]

From what I\'ve read, the Breeders\' Cup is akin to an NFL franchise: it\'s not a gift the BC bestows on a worthy recipient; it is sold to the bidder who offers the most.  I\'ve read that Churchill Downs, Inc. doesn\'t think the BC is a particularly good deal for a track on the terms currently being offered.  In the case of Santa Anita, the bidder is not profit-driven Magna, but the Oak Tree charitable trust, which may be less concerned about driving a hard bargain.

It\'s hard for me to decipher what the BC is thinking.  Santa Anita is probably a good economic deal for them.  Further, if they\'re trying to build a more international event, California seems to be able to draw both from Europe and from Asia, and a synthetic surface may be for attractive than dirt to overseas runners bred for turf.

On the flip side, it is the BREEDERS\' Cup, and the synthetic surfaces are a threat to turn stallion values upside down.  One would think the breeders, of all people, would want to proceed slowly.  Maybe, with Gulfstream, CD, and NYRA out of the picture, the BC just didn\'t have a lot of good dirt options.  In any event, the timing of the Santa Anita announcement could certainly have been better.

[miff]

Bit,

You hit on something that some may not know. The BC is no bargain or profit maker for the selected venue and the tracks that need to make a profit are not jumping up and down to get it except for the smaller venue\'s looking to be more mainstream.

Like most of racing, the BC Management team is nothing special as executives go.


Mike

[miff]

JB,

Hope you don\'t mind this post.


By STEVEN CRIST
 
NEW YORK - The announcement Thursday that the Breeders\' Cup will be run at Santa Anita in both 2008 and 2009 was not a proud moment for American racing. It betrayed the history and ideals of the event and cast an unfortunately accurate picture of a dysfunctional industry that is in crisis on several fronts.

While Cup officials are bravely maintaining that this is a positive experiment that may provide some marketing benefits, those involved in the process concede privately that they were making the best of a bad situation.

The 2009 Cup had been expected to go to either Belmont Park or Churchill Downs, which last hosted it in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The Cup is supposed to move around the country, generally rotating among California, Kentucky, and New York with an additional track outside that axis (such as Arlington, Lone Star, or Monmouth in recent years) completing the lineup.

Instead, neither Belmont nor Churchill was awarded the 2009 Cup, for different disturbing reasons.

Cup officials say that the New York Racing Association\'s all-consuming efforts to get its franchise renewed prevented it from seeking the 2009 event, and that the Cup board did not feel comfortable awarding it to a track that is in bankruptcy and subsisting on a series of three-week renewals.

Churchill\'s case is just as discouraging. Officials of the publicly held company reportedly have been seeking a higher revenue stream from the event - the Breeders\' Cup basically rents your facility for the price of what you would make on an ordinary Friday and Saturday - and were unable to come to terms on a richer deal with Breeders\' Cup. So we have the nation\'s iconic Derby racetrack essentially refusing to host the sport\'s year-end championships, something once considered an honor, because of a disagreement over hot-dog and souvenir commissions.

And some people wonder why sponsors and broadcasters don\'t consider racing a major league sport.

It\'s also entirely unclear why the venue for a November 2009 event had to be announced 21 months in advance. A deal renewing NYRA\'s franchise could be in place by this week, and it\'s hard to believe that another month of discussion might not have yielded a palatable deal with Churchill Downs. The official explanation, that there was a Breeders\' Cup board meeting scheduled for last Thursday and that it always helps to have as much time as possible for advance planning, is not particularly compelling. It\'s difficult to believe that only 19 or 20 months\' notice, rather than 21, would have hampered the 2009 event.

The timing is all the stranger given Santa Anita\'s ongoing drainage problems with its Cushion Track. There is little doubt that it will be repaired by this October, much less the following November, and everyone denies vehemently that the 2009 award was a precursor to relocating this year\'s Cup. Still, it seems odd to tell the world with pride that you\'re running your championships for an unprecedented two straight years over a track that has been unsuitable for racing most of this year. Why not hold off on the decision until after the repairs have been made instead of ratifying and releasing it the same day that Santa Anita announced yet another cancellation?

Cushion Track itself is another reason the choice of back-to-back Santa Anita Breeders\' Cups is an unfortunate one. Regardless of how one feels about artificial surfaces, their introduction into American racing is clearly having its growing pains. No one can say with any confidence whether a decade from now they will be widely used and beloved, used for training rather than racing, or have been relegated to the scrap heap of noble failures. Nor has there been enough top-grade racing on these surfaces to say whether they are the fair and proper venues on which to conduct the sport\'s richest races and determine its champions. The premature and haphazard way they have been foisted upon the sport has left everyone in a state of confusion.

Running the 2008 races on Cushion Track was already an iffy proposition, and deciding this early to do it two years in a row is an unwarranted leap of faith. No track should be given consecutive Breeders\' Cups, regardless of whether it\'s in California or New York or somewhere in between, but at this juncture in history it is even worse to schedule two straight Cups on a new and unproven synthetic surface.

Perhaps the saddest thing of all is that once Belmont and Churchill were deemed unsuitable candidates for 2009, there apparently was not a single alternative among the more than 100 other racetracks in America. There\'s something to be said for holding the event in the largest possible media market, but whatever tiny gains might accrue on the marketing side seem smaller than what is being lost in the way of the fairness and credibility of the racing itself.

[fkach]

P-DUB

Just because a surface is reasonably honest to all running styles does not mean that all horses like it the same as dirt. IMO lots of horses move up and down on all the synthetics even if some tend to impact form more than others.

IMO, any time you throw your horse on a surface he may not like you are potentially wasting an effort and a chance to earn some money. If you have a reason to think he will prefer it (training, pedigree etc..) or think a win will enhance his value without jeapordizing it if he loses that\'s another matter.

But I don\'t think people excuse a loss on artificial as easily as they do a loss on turf (at least yet) because the industry is promoting the fantasy that these artifical tracks are a dirt substitute when in fact they are something entirely different. So IMO, there is potential loss of value if your top horse runs poorly.

For example, I thought Hysterical Lady was a good value in the BC because I was already convinced she wasn\'t as good on the new tracks and would move up at MTH. The only thing that prevented me punching a major bet was her post. She just went back to Cushion and I am reading articles where people are shocked that she ran subpar again.  I wasn\'t expecting that bad an effort (maybe she got hurt I don\'t know), but I expected her form to deteriorate again.

This kind of thing extends to training for the Triple Crown. If you don\'t agree with me that some horses dislike the stuff and others move up, there is no discussion. But if you agree, my personal preference would be to know exactly where my horse\'s condition was and what his current ability was on dirt during the prep phase. I think the artifical surfaces would cloud my own ability to analyze and handle my horses properly. So I would avoid races like the SA Derby with my first string. I might send a 3rd stringer out there to take a shot at the big purse and probable weak race and pray he moved up, but I\'d never run my 1st stringer in that race.  

If this stuff turns out to be a success, so be it. I am just pointing out that if I was in a postion to make decisions with valuable horses, I would be shipping all my best dirt horses out of CA (unless I knew they loved the stuff based on training) and I might consider shipping some of my best turfers out there because it might open up some additional options if any of them moved up on it in training (if not there is plenty of great turf racing out there anyway).