Power cap- existential handicapping
05 August 2008
Saratoga-Too Much Of A Good Thing
Porterhouse is my favorite cut of meat but If I had to eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 6 weeks I would surely make its way to the bottom of my favorite cuts of meat list right under buffalo testicles. Saratoga has been running 10 or 11 races a day since the meet began. While the action has been intriguing it has reached a point where it is too much action. Day after day of five hour cards and 40 page pp printouts have begun to wear thin. I see that Wednesday yet another 10 race beast. This is an area where the obsessive horse racing fan can get into trouble. With all the statebred action this week it may be a good time to tune out for a few days and refresh the mind with other interests.
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4 comments:
I agree that the 10 and 11 race cards are wearying; I've seen this written in several places, and I think it would be great if NYRA carded a few old-fashioned nine-race weekday cards coming up.
What, I wonder, do the horsemen think? I imagine that the more races for them, the better.
all valid points... that should be added to self appointed fan committee!
I wrote about this same thing last week. The racing day needs to be shorter, faster, tighter. A 9 race card day seems like the right number.
As for what horsemen think, the more races, and the higher purses, the better. One of Castle Village Farm's fillies is in Thursday's 3rd, with a maximum seven-horse field, which makes me very happy. In other years, that race (N3L $35,000) might not have gone at all.
But I hear from some trainers that the racing office had a hard time filling the Thursday card, and were hustling horses into races just to make the race go. You can probably expect a fair number of scratches Thursday. And Wednesday's card is just as bad.
But I do see the long-run danger. If we bore the fans to death, as this week's racing looks like doing, we're chasing away support for the long term.
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