THE FUTURE OF RACING

            Every activity has its doomsayers, be it the development of an entire civilization (“the country is going to the dogs”), or simply a new invention, such as the airplane (“it’ll never work”).

            Racing isn’t too much different in this regard, over the years the prognosis of near and impending doom has been directed towards the sport for a variety of reasons.  I faintly recall one prediction that said we’d all be out of business by 1990.

            Certainly there have been some disturbing trends.  The financial fluctuations of the horse sales market sometimes suggests that the whole house of cards will collapse at any minute, but people still continue to buy and sell horses.

            Sagging attendance at the tracks has been held up as a barometer of disintegration, but whether you like them or not the shift to satellite facilities is keeping everything glued together.

            The age of racegoers is sometimes cited, I think the last one was supposed to have died about ten years ago, but somehow new people still seem to find the track.

            And you certainly couldn’t find a better doomsayer than Lou Wolfson who, in 1986, said that “(it is) my very profound prediction that, if the Thoroughbred racing and breeding industry continues for the next twenty-five years the way it has gone in the past twenty, it simply will not be able to survive”.

            What disturbs me is that most critics look only at the weaknesses of the obvious, and fail to consider the unexpected bends in the road that could have a far more devastating effect.

            It is often said that the downfall of any large endeavor is something everyone had overlooked.  So while you may worry about the problems that seem most immediate, I suggest you consider the following scenarios as examples of those little things no one has mentioned.  As you will see, the problems you think might cause the downfall of racing are insignificant when compared to the effects of the unexpected.

The Day The Jockey Club Ran Out Of Names

            With the annual increase in foals each year, it had become increasingly difficult for owners and breeders to come up with original names for their horses. 

            The Jockey Club computer was already working day and night spewing out rejections of names submitted as being unavailable, either due to recent use or simply because they were obscene.

            As it became more difficult to create acceptable names, the names became increasingly ridiculous.  Horses with no say in the matter were tagged with such sobriquets as Yaayaa Googoo, Do Wa Diddy Diddy, and Pop Pop B. B. Gun.  To make matters worse, many horsemen resented seeing the name of one of their old favorites being used again, and bloodlines researchers were going crazy when given a name that their computer told them had at one time or another belonged to eight different horses.  One pedigree consultant, not certain which of three identical names of a dam was the one sought, simply put together three different pedigrees, gave them to his client telling him to choose the one he wanted, and announced that in the future any mail for him could be forwarded in care of The Daisy Hill Funny Farm.

            With the proliferation of duplicate names it was inevitable that horsemen finally put their foot down and declared, starting with the foal crop of 2008, all horse names would have to be originals, no reuse of past names allowed,

            This naturally caused an increased workload at The Jockey Club, who were forced to buy a larger computer and hire six extra staff members just to keep pace with the rejections.  Eventually, of course, all possible combinations of letters that were remotely pronounceable had been exhausted.  This led to names that were completely unpronounceable, and announcers across the country simply began calling races by program numbers.  The purists were understandably shocked when Dave Johnson, calling the 150^th Kentucky Derby from his wheelchair, announced “Number eight” as the winner.

            But the race callers really had no choice in the matter, most had agreed sometime earlier that a superstar named Ozrwlxqpcfz had been the final straw.

            Finally, one day in the spring of 2027, The Jockey Club computer was analyzing its latest batch of input when it suddenly began making strange whirring sounds, smoke started floating up out of its air vents and, just before all its lights went out, it slowly issued one final printout that read:  “No Names Available”.

            The racing world was shocked when this news got out, and a series of emergency meetings were held in an attempt to come to a decision on the problem.  Numbers were among the most prominent suggestions for ‘names’, but there were still enough purists to put a stop to that idea.  The reuse of older names was quickly blocked by the same people who had first eliminated it.  As might be expected of emergency meetings requiring brilliant decisions and enlightened ideas, everyone finally agreed that the problem was insurmountable. 

            They then announced that, since there were no more names available, there would be no more names, thus racing would have to cease to exist.

            To placate the six major tracks still in existence and their 46,897 satellite outlets, Japanese robots were brought in for racing, no one having any objection to calling a robot by a serial number. 

            What few horse farms that remained in the country (most of them having already been paved over to build shopping centers) promptly ceased all breeding operations and turned to the highly profitable growing of peppermint flavored rutabagas.

            Over a period of years, as the last of the old-time horsemen passed on, the sport was pretty much forgotten, and everyone in the country still went about their business, often commenting on how good peppermint flavored rutabagas were.

The Day The Banned All Medication

            Some people attributed it to the California cocaine scandal when the government stepped in and not only banned the use of any medication for horses, but installed their own full-time staff of investigators at every racetrack in the country to insure compliance.

            Only a few government insiders knew it wasn’t really anything bad that racing had done per se, it was just that the people in the country had steadily turned into such a drug oriented culture that there simply wasn’t enough cocaine and other such drugs left to go around.  Elected officials, wishing to remain that way, knew that the people came first, and to threaten their supply of illegal medications was to court disaster.  It was bad enough that there was simply a rumor that marijuana might be in short supply, and a group calling itself Save The Stoned launched such massive protest rallies that America’s jails were emptied and all the prisoners sent to Mexico to help with the crop.

            With government investigators lurking in every feedbin and around every corner, the minority of trainers trying to gain an edge were soon rooted out.  It was simple enough to spot the most obvious drugs, but the government had a mission, which soon became apparent when one trainer was hanged for carrying a Hershey bar in the backstretch.

            Simple things like aspirin on the grounds, despite protests that it was meant for human consumption, were cause for immediate and harsh disciplinary action.

            Soon all external medications such as iodine were banned, it being agreed upon by a government paid medical committee that such things could penetrate the pores of a horses body and cause all kinds of illegal stimulation.

            Most trainers, of course, tried to cooperate as best they could, but when ten of them in Arizona were indicted by a grand jury for possession of Hooflex, a number of trainers decided to give up and took up correspondence courses in advanced tree trimming.

            Those that were left were still watched closely, starting their mornings by taking a breath test at the racing secretary’s office to be sure there were no traces of alcoholic beverages or oyster juice that might be inhaled by a horse and thus affect his performance.

            Some trainers even quit drinking altogether and tried to abide by the hay, oats and water rule, even though it was difficult to find any backstretch help that would muck out stalls and not insist, with a certain amount of justification, that it was their right to get bombed out of their skulls.

            But the final blow came when, first, a chemist discovered that hay, when treated with the proper chemicals, created in humans a hitherto unknown euphoria.  Horsemen, of course, could no longer get hay deliveries, since people were smoking it as fast as it could be grown.

            Another chemist, having his morning bowl of oat bran, accidentally poked himself with a fork and experienced a new high that he attributed solely to oats.  In no time at all oats were in critical supply, everyone in the country happily mainlining every scrap of the stuff they could get.

            About this time, owing to acid rain and toxic waste, the government announced that all the water in the world had been found to be contaminated, and promptly banned it.  Since most people in the country had known that for years anyway, they simply created a black market for it and everyone continued to happily guzzle a wide variety of poisonous chemicals their systems had become used to.

            The horses, however, were restricted to liquid nourishment in the form of specially formulated and purified yaks milk, and after a diet of this most of them could barely stand up in their stalls, let alone race.

            Racing, obviously, no longer existed, but by this time the country was too stoned to care.  The government, in the meantime, spent many subsequent years proudly pointing to their accomplishment in cleaning up the sport of horse racing.

The Day The Tracks Ran Out of Promotions

For years racetracks had tried every conceivable kind of promotion to lure new fans to the tracks.  There were rock bands, skydivers parachuting into the infield, celebrities giving out free autographs (except for baseball players, who still charged $20 a letter), snake charmers, mariachi bands, and one track even put an entire circus on the grounds.  Unfortunately the security there wasn’t too good, and they discarded that idea when several horses tested positive for cotton candy.

            Baseball and football games in the infield were popular enough, but unfortunately the teams wanted too much money to play the regular seasons at the tracks, the result being meaningless exhibition games.  And the tracks began to lose interest in even those when one prominent trainer, in the process of giving his rider a leg up before a race, was killed instantly by a line drive.

            As the tracks became more desperate they booked everything imaginable, but nothing seemed to fit or attract a lot of new fans.  State executions in the paddock proved to be a very popular attraction, but there simply weren’t enough condemned prisoners to keep up with the demand.

            Similarly, the giveaways ultimately reached a saturation point.  Everyone who had at one time or another been lured to the tracks had enough tube socks, caps, ponchos, watches that glowed in the dark, pocket calculators, monogrammed curry combs and electric foot warmers to last a dozen lifetimes.  There came a day, most people think it was about the time Hollywood Park gave out left handed kazoos and rotating watchamacallits, that the tracks couldn’t think of a single solitary thing to give away that they hadn’t already done.

            Needless to say this resulted in massive layoffs of marketing people, not to mention the fact that the Taiwan economy went bankrupt in a week.

            Still, one contemplative racetrack owner thought he had a brilliant solution, and put together his own advertising campaign telling the public that while there were no more non-racing attractions, and no more giveaways, his track offered something even better: the thrill and beauty of the sport of horse racing.

            Many people in the industry immediately applauded him for such a unique idea, and anxiously awaited the public reaction to such a daring plan.

            He even went one step further, disassociating himself from the satellite networks, telling people how much more they would enjoy the sport if they could see it first hand.  A chance to lean over the railing and hear the thundering hooves in the fresh air, to gather around the saddling paddock and smell the atmosphere of real, live racing as it was meant to be.

            For three weeks before the opening of his meeting he spent a fortune on ads in newspapers, radio spots, and especially attractive television features.  All eyes in the sport were on the track for opening day.

            Unfortunately, the world by this time had become a plastic one, which required plastic entertainment, and only 47 people showed up.  Of these, six had gotten lost on the freeway and had stopped in to ask for directions, ten thought it was the opening of a new zoo, two dozen were tourists who thought the Thoroughbreds were the local soccer team, and five were simply looking for a place to spend the night.

            Needless to say the owner died of a broken heart and the track was plowed under to make room for the world’s largest Cheese Taco stand.

The Day Racing Became The Number One Pastime

            Racing had long bemoaned its lack of exposure to the majority of the populace, often pointing out the poor coverage in many of the nation’s newspapers, and the fact that it was generally ignored in most major magazines.  While a natural sport for television, only the most major of events managed to get picked up, and even then ratings were marginal.

            But all of that changed the day that racing decided to hire one T. P. Barnum as its new National Promoter and, armed with a hefty budget from the Breeders’ Cup, Barnum proceeded to address the challenge of making horse racing the most well known sport in the country.

            His first masterstroke was to buy the Daily Racing Form, with the provision that he would make no significant changes.  He abided by this, since his only purpose was to increase the press run to 500 million copies and ship large quantities to major markets for insertion in existing newspapers.  “Billions of grocery store coupons are clipped out of inserts every year,” he reasoned, “so it’s a good bet these same people would read a Form if you stuck it in front of them.”

            Of course, such an insert tended to get a little lost inside something on the order of the Los Angeles or New York Times, but it was an overwhelming presence in the smaller weekday editions, and over a period of time much smaller papers were clamoring to be included as Form insert distributors because of the growing prestige.

            Eventually there were very few people in the country who hadn’t seen a Daily Racing Form, and it was simply a matter of educating the public that this was the door to a much more fascinating gambling enterprise than some scratch off lottery ticket worth maybe five bucks, or the remote chance of winning $40 million.  Once educated to the advertising theme of “there’s a winner in every race…and sometimes more than one”, accompanied by a photo of the finish of the 1944 Carter Handicap, people were soon convinced that racing was the most fascinating wagering proposition ever conceived, and soon tracks found they didn’t have enough room for all the people.

            Barnum, of course, had already foreseen this, and the increasing popularity fit in perfectly with his offer to let television networks have racing for free, as long as they programmed at least 60 hours a week of it.  The networks, tired of being gouged by other sporting events, jumped at the chance to get free rights to a growing pastime, and soon practically everyone had a Form and could watch the races at home after calling a toll-free number that Barnum had set up in each state to handle bets.  The telephone betting system, of course, was another Barnum touch; once he convinced various state legislators that it would make money for the state, and they could choose the cronies of their choice to run the local operations, getting the necessary permission was one of his easiest tasks.

            Barnum left no stone unturned in his mission to put racing in front of everyone in the country.  He had people on street corners handing out free copies of The Blood-Horse to passer-bys.  This tactic did upset The Watchtower people, but he had them outnumbered and, in fact, converted a few of them.  He gave schools free textbooks, asking only that The History of Thoroughbred Racing and How To Read The Daily Racing Form be included, and there wasn’t an outhouse in the remotest area of the country that didn’t include a Stallion Register where the Sears catalog used to be.

            With such saturation the country made racing its overwhelming choice as the national pastime, if not mania.  The tracks were mobbed and the betting was staggering.

            Barnum, however, had overlooked two things.  First, so many people began gambling with wild abandon that many of them found they couldn’t pay their taxes, prompting the federal government to step in and seize the entire operation.

            Secondly, Barnum had spent so much money that had come from the horsemen, they all went broke and couldn’t afford to breed more horses, thus the entire breeding industry and sales market collapsed.

            The government ban on racing that ensued was thus somewhat academic, but Barnum remained philosophical to the end.

            “Look,” he said, “they just hired me to make it popular.  They never said anything about saving it.”