The Missing Voice in Eclipse Award Voting

The Hall of Fame, Synthetic Tracks and NY Racing

A Column by Steve Davidowitz
December 05, 2007

As we approach the end of 2007, there are a few things bothering me about contemporary racing issues that deserve some comment. For instance:

Eclipse Award ballots are in the mail and along with Curlin's probable Horse of the Year Award, most categories were decided on Breeders' Cup Day. Yet I have always believed that something is wrong with a voting process that excludes the most ardent supporters of the game - horseplayers.

Having happily voted as a credentialed racing writer since 1972, it nevertheless seems a foolish oversight to leave active horseplayers out of the process. This is especially true in the age of the internet when it would be easy to give frequent track visitors and active bettors a vote equal to mine.

Nor would it be a stretch for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and Daily Racing Form to use such an informed "fan vote" as a sensible promotional vehicle. To this point resistance to the idea has come from too many short-sighted, stodgy thinkers who believe they have a sacred right to control such things. In the meantime, many of these same track officials and racing writers wonder aimlessly how to increase fan interest in the game.

Faulty Hall of Fame voting procedures:

Speaking of stodgy thinking and ballots, I have bigger problems with the way the crème de la crème of racing are elected to the Hall of Fame at Saratoga. This, even though I am one of the few dozen racing writers and track officials who get to nominate potential candidates.

Yesterday, as per the Hall of Fame's voting procedures, I faxed my nominations to the Hall, complying with their restrictions to name only one new possible male horse, one female horse, one jockey and one trainer to be voted upon during the winter.

This is a faulty and prejudicial rule that forces voters to overlook many worthy members in each category.

This year, for example, trainer Bob Baffert becomes eligible for the first time after the requisite 25 years of service. No doubt, with Baffert's numerous Triple Crown and Breeders' Cup victories, it is inconceivable that he will fail to gather enough votes for election in 2008.

Yet, Baffert's sure-fire election also means that worthy horsemen such as Carl Nafzger and Jerry Hollendorfer are unlikely to get in. Next year perhaps, but each year there always seems to be another hot shot who becomes eligible to knock worthy candidates by the wayside.

The same is true for top horses such as the great grass champions Manila and Lure who have been bypassed in each of the past several years while newly eligible horses suddenly reached eligibility five years after retirement.

One male and one female horse and one jockey and one trainer each year has been the policy for as long as I can remember, but all it has done is squeeze out worthy candidates. Indeed, less worthy candidates frequently get in simply because it is natural for voting members to accent familiar candidates with good credentials who become eligible for the first time.

At the bottom line, the Hall makes its own rules and those of us who have been fighting for change have only recently managed to get a few revisions on the agenda for future meetings.

More supervision needed in the synthetic track era:

Another personal peeve has only recently come to the fore, but I believe it is so important that something has to be done to address it in every racing state where synthetic tracks are installed or are likely to replace traditional dirt surfaces.

Specifically, we have already seen - at Del Mar in Southern California, at Turfway Park Park in Kentucky, at every other track with a synthetic racing surface - how sensitive these artificial tracks can be to added moisture or the lack of same. The Polytrack at Del Mar, for example, played lightning fast during morning training hours when moisture-laden clouds blocked out the early sunshine and helped keep the track surface cool and slightly wet.

After the clouds burned off and the summer sun baked down on the synthetic surface, the wax coating that is fundamental to the synthetic mixture melted and left the track so slow that top-quality horses ran about three seconds slower than par for six furlongs and six seconds slower than par at 1 1/14 miles.

At the current Hollywood Park meet, track officials have also seen the Cushion Track surface speed up with moisture applied by track maintenance as they have seen it slow down while providing limited moisture at their discretion.

After a few weeks of unbiased racing over a normal racing surface, Hollywood Park suddenly began to play exceedingly fast while favoring front running types at most distances. The cause for this change? Added moisture of course.

Frankly, every synthetic track in the country has been affected by varying degrees of track maintenance and the suspicion is growing that it is done purposefully to turn form upside down and increase the probability of Pick Six carryovers.

Whether this suspicion is in fact real, the only way to protect the fairness of our game in the synthetic track era is through scrupulous supervision by vigilant track stewards.

At every track with an artificial racing surface, the presiding stewards must make it their business to monitor the way these synthetics are watered and/or manicured. While the health of the horses we love to bet on is the primary stated reason for the synthetic track experiment, horseplayers need just as much protection to stay alive in the game.

So what's really going on with New York racing:

Shifting gears, many horseplayers and racing writers are wondering: How will the political mess be resolved before the New York Racing Association's 50-year contract to run NY racing expires on Dec. 31?

Handicapping this mess is worse than trying to pick a winner in a $5,000 maiden claiming race in which all the horses have failed to win in 15 or more starts. But I will give it a try:

* The NYRA will retain control of the racing end of things, under the watchful eye of an oversight committee appointed by high-profile political hacks. None of these appointees, of course, will have ever bet more than $100 on a day's worth of races and none will know how to read Daily Racing Form past performances with any real appreciation for the game's nuances.

* An oversight committee appointed by the same political hacks will run the slot machines at Aqueduct and Belmont Park. Before a year is out, the NY Post will break a story on how there is money missing from the gross receipts.

* Another oversight committee will take over the NY Off Track Betting Corporation with revenues divided equally amongst organizations run by still more political hacks appointed by Governor Eliot Spitzer, NY Assembly leader Joseph Bruno, State Senator Sheldon Silver and NY's Mayor Michael Bloomberg. To buy their silence, horsemen will get a slice of this golden goose as will the NYRA, which badly needs money to beef up its facilities.

As a price for this political harmony, NY horseplayers will probably be hit with a higher pari-mutuel takeout on all wagers and the casino-style terminals to be installed will have terrible pay tables and painfully high takeout percentages. In other words, you have been warned: the game will go on of course, but NY horseplayers and video poker players will get screwed.

Steve Davidowitz has written two highly acclaimed books on Thoroughbred racing---Betting Thoroughbreds and The Best and Worst of Thoroughbred Racing. He also is a regular contributor to Daily Racing Form's Simulcast Weekly and DRF Plus and his columns appear in the Bodog Racebook each week.