I’m not closely following all the hootin’ and hollerin’ going on about Santa Anita too closely. However, I will say that I’m not a fan of takeout hikes in general, but perusing the weekend cards for the past two weeks has uncovered something odd, at least to me. Both weekends saw very similar races in the same division carded both days of the weekend.
Last weekend in the handicap division:
Saturday 2/5: Strub Stakes - 9F G2 $200,000 (7 entrants)
Sunday 2/6: San Antonio Stakes - 9F G2 $150,00 (6 entrants)
This weekend in the distaff division:
Saturday 2/12: Santa Maria Stakes - 8.5F G2 $150,000 (5 entries)
Sunday 2/13: La Canada Stakes - 9F G2 $150,000 (4 entries)
In each instance both races are carded on the same surface with little or no difference in distance. The handicap division had slightly better turn out but could have easily been one race with 13 entries. This weekend’s distaff races are far more glaring with only five entries in the Santa Maria and four in the La Canada (after scratches).
I suspect that owners and horseman prefer it this way, but is it in the best interest of racing in California with sinking handle? I honestly don’t know, but am guessing some of you might have an opinion or two!
Watching the Eclipse Awards the other night on uStream, I was struck by how many folks went out of their way to mention not only the importance of fans, but the importance of NEW FANS. As the co-founder of a fan education site, I couldn’t agree more!
As we look to the future, we must also pass on our passion and excitement for this glorious sport to the next generation. It is our obligation. A candle loses nothing by lighting another.
We plan on building on our platform this year by adding horse profiles, track guides and focusing on posts that help new players create and/or refine their practice. As you can imagine, not only does all this take time, it takes money.
So, I’d like to cordially invite all of those industry entities that are interested in the creation of new fans to support our efforts!
We even offer you a variety of ways to do so:
1. Advertise in our Ad Network
We have an extensive network of excellent blogs, forums and independent media sites that could be displaying your ad above the fold. This helps to fund to the creation of new fans because we use our portion of the proceeds to fund the creation of content at HRF (yes, we pay our contributors!). Find out more about our network here.
2. Advertise your product on one of our sites
If potential, new and/or casual fans are not really your demographic, we also could also advertise your product on Raceday 360, a site we acquired this year from horse racing’s original blogger, Jessica Chapel (who’s also a HRF Contributor!). Any ad money derived from either of our sites goes to content creation on HRF. Well, and other business expenses such as hosting, etc.
3. Just give us cash
If you don’t really have anything to advertise but just want to help, you could always give us cash! Just sent it to paypal at hello race fans dot com.
4. Link to us
We love cash and it certainly keeps the site going but making it easy for folks to find the site helps too!
We’re working on a proper media kit targeted for Q2, but you could call us at 1-800-801-0931 or reach us here to get the ball rolling.
I’d also like to thank those in the industry who have supported us so far:
Plenty of individuals have supported us too, and we greatly appreciate it. There are far too many to list but all of contributors (including folks who participate in our Indexes) and publishers are among them.
If you’re looking for folks in the industry who actively support the creation of new fans and retention of budding fans, look no further than this list. A list you can easily add your organization too!
Sadly for me it’s Sneezy Saturday, so instead going to out to Belmont I’ll be enjoying the festivities from home with a bowl of soup. But, no doubt you’ve seen Crist’s and o_crunk’s commentaries? To sum it up, we’re being deprived of showdowns. I’d put together a more pithy and well thought out summary, but I have a raging head cold, and you should just read their pieces!
But back to the point, do you think a day like today with 9 Grade 1 is “Sleepy” or “Super”? Would you prefer to see a little less racing with more showdowns or do you think the current amount of races works just fine? I can make arguments for both points of view. On the one hand, it’s nice to have a good amount of graded races this weekend compared to the last two weekends, but on the other none of them really stand out to me (which could also be due in part to the head cold).
I noticed something else interesting this week that perhaps speaks to the bigger problem at hand. Roger Lyons said something you don’t often hear from places other than HANA:
No matter how rich the rich are, it makes no sense to invest in thoroughbred production during a time when the ordinary people who would otherwise comprise effective demand for the product–as an object of beauty, grace, and wager–are losing their homes and livelihoods.
He pegs players as the consumers and buyers as suppliers of the commercial breeding industry:
The thoroughbred industry’s problem is a lot bigger than just a lack of demand for racehorses and breeding stock. Yes, commercial breeders experience it as such, and it’s painful, but, as I’ve argued before, it’s a mistake to think of thoroughbred sales as even a proximate function of effective demand. Those buyers are, in fact, investors in the system of production. Through them the system distributes young horses for training and channels breeding stock into more efficient use. They are suppliers, not consumers.
This is something I’ve only ever heard players say before. Very interesting. Couple that lack of demand with a giant amount of races and you start to see the problem from a holistic point of view.
On our last poll, “Which is more likely, Santa Anita returning to dirt or a Rachel Alexandra & Zenyatta showdown” y’all nailed it! That is if SA goes forwards with their plan, which it looks like it is.
If I had a holiday wish this season, it would be to see the industry support it’s own more often and particularly in the high profile circumstances where non-racing related charities tend to get the most support by our industry. Not only would it help raise awareness for the racing related charities, it would probably be some inherent “positive” marketing by showcasing an industry that’s concerned and supportive of it’s equine and human athletes.
When the Kentucky Derby rolls around each year, few ordinary fans are aware of the grisly waste of horseflesh that underpins the self-proclaimed Sport of Kings. One of the unacknowledged traditions of racing has been wholesale neglect of glorious thoroughbreds once their competitive days are done. Notions of happily ever- aftering in the bluegrass are largely myth.
While the editorial makes some fair points it hung a lot of sweeping generalizations on one (horrifying) case (Paraneck Stables). Is there a problem? Yes. Should the industry being doing more to address it? Hell yes. Are there places in the industry already taking measures to address the issues? Yes, and one is cited in the editorial but not without taking a shot:
The crackdown is welcome but late in coming to a multibillion-dollar industry that can make a humane show of ministering to its celebrity champions while gracelessly relegating thousands more to destruction at the bidding of “kill buyers” who work the sport’s fringe.
As the upstate scandal spread across the Internet, equine care charities and ordinary people have been helping the victimized horses to sweet resurrection as ranch retirees and recreational companions.
They are shepherded by pioneer protective groups like the Columbia-Greene Humane Society/Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. The foundation has been saving thoroughbreds since 1984, when it began buying horses for rural prisons, to be cared for by minimum-security inmates. “The little guy just wants to run free,” one inmate said of his horse. “And I don’t blame him.”
What I find so galling about the Times editorial is that they fail to give direct mention to places like Another Chance 4 Horses, which actually “broke” the Paragallo story by posting it on their site (from there Paulick picked it up). Yet they cite the (deserving of praise) Columbia-Greene Human Society by name as if they were the only ones involved. As often as the industry fails to support it’s own, the Times minimizes groups within the industry working on the problems, or so it seems to me.
So c’mon owners, tracks and industry organizations, let’s support our own not only big race days but always! Next time you send out a press release check and see if the charities you’re supporting support those within the industry trying to address it’s issues… and perhaps then the New York Times will be forced to editorialize about it!
Update: Upon seeing this tweeted reaction to the NYT editorial and googling, I was pleased to find this passage about some of the excellent things a few tracks are doing to address “aftercare” (as it seems it’s called):
In the area of caring for horses after their careers, Turfway Park has a “surrender stall,” where horsemen can leave horses, “no questions asked.” The track supplies food and hay until the Kentucky Equine Humane Center retrieves the Thoroughbred. Also cited in this area were Woodbine, which commits a percentage of purses to aftercare; the jockeys at Monmouth Park, who commit a percentage of their mount fees; as well as the New York Racing Association tracks and California.
It is a cautionary tale for every other animal-related sport that doesn’t do nearly enough to protect its competitors while racing and guarantee them safe, dignified retirements after their careers are over. Sadly, horse racing falls into that category.
Sitting around the channel 11 yule log with no racing to watch, I thought I’d take a moment to compose a little blog post as there hasn’t been much going on here at GbG. However, I have managed to choke out a few pieces here and there. Grab some nog and let’s review!
While we’re working on the more fully featured, content rich site at Hello Race Fans we have a nice series going called “Letters to a New Horseplayer“. We’ve asked a wide variety of professional racing folks and regular players to share their thoughts with potential new fans and players.
There’s some great stuff over there and we’ll be rolling out more in the coming months. I recently added mine, which I sort of wrote to myself if I had the ability to go back in time. I would have been really jazzed to stumble upon them as a super-newbie and our hopes for the entire site is to make it easy for potential new fans/players to connect and engage with racing (fingers crossed!).
His vision for the project is to have a place where industry professionals can look for inspiration, discussion and thought about how better to utilize technology to enable better products, more effective marketing and/or better customer experience. Both Jessica and I have finally starting contributing with the recent series “Top 5 Innovations of the Decade” where we polled a nice panel of independent industry media folk for their top 5 innovations of the decade. We’re up to #2, race replays, which I wrote. Monday we’ll unveil #1.
If you’re a fan of lists and/or compilations, you should keep tabs on Jessica’s list of lists. She’s compiling all of the end of the year/decade posts. There’s quite a few and no doubt there will be more by the end of next week. I won’t be doing one, or at least I’m not planning on it! However, I will have a decade related poll next week.
Thanks to all of you who made your way over to Facebook to vote the many deserving racing charities in the Chase Community Giving project. No racing charities made it to round #2 but a charity frequently supported by racing, the Susan G. Korman “For the Cure”, did make it.
If I had a holiday wish this season, it would be to see the industry support it’s own more often and particularly in the high profile circumstances where non-racing related charities tend to get the most support by our industry. Not only would it help raise awareness for the racing related charities, it would probably be some inherent “positive” marketing by showcasing an industry that’s concerned and supportive of it’s equine and human athletes.
And if Race For Education exists, why can’t something similar be set up to make it easy for owners to donate to safe retirement, injured jockey funds as well as education for family members of backstretch workers (which I think is fantastic, btw).
The way it works is that owners nominate their horse(s) to be part of the program, the owner decides how much of a percentage of their winnings get donated and the horsemen’s bookkeepers make the deductions directly from the purse distributions. Hats off to Race for Education for making it so easy for folks to donate, let’s hope for more inspired industry support in the coming decade!
Also in the inspired giving department, Kevin of Colin’s Ghost (who’s got a nice contribution to the Letter series at HRF!) has decided to use the Hello Race Fans Ad Network as his own form of giving. He’s donating all of his advertising proceeds to the DRF Preservation Fund. We’re happy that’s he’s chosen the HRF network for what can only be described as adver-giving (or is that charity-tizing?)!
And until tomorrow when racing is back in action, enjoy this odd “holiday” clip from the NYC OTB channel. Last year they just had the wreath pictured above but this year they’ve branched out and are toggling between several “wintery”(?) vignettes including ice skating and the New York Harbor. Please note the shaky camera is there’s not mine. Let’s hope this high quality programming is not shades of things to come for New York ADW users. Happy holidays y’all!
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