Local B.C. Preps Are A Huge Dud

The last few weeks I have been looking forward to "Super Saturday" at Belmont. Now that the card has been printed and the plans solidified I feel like I have a juvenile case of Christmas morning buyers remorse. That toy looked so good in the Toys-Я-Us flyer, but now that it is open it is quite the bore. This Saturday's Belmont card is not only a bore, it just may be defective. Those are not a gaggle of small parts, those small parts are the small fields we are forced to play with. What factors have contributed to the sharp decent of graded race quality at Belmont? Racing has attempted to expand by division and has compartmentalized the competition into too many small parts. Too many tracks, too many surfaces and too many divisions.

Thirty-one betting interests over Saturday's five Grade I races equals an average of 6 per race. It must have pained P.J. Campo to publish this card. At least three of the races will have a formidable odds-on favorite. Gio Ponti will be 1-9, Fabulous Strike looks like 2-5 and Music Note should be 1-5. Not only are these races unbettable but they are boring to watch. This is not about some degenerate needing action, it is about an entertainment venue having the attraction of a pet rock. Racing this boring is like watching old re-runs of the "A team"; no matter what happens you know what the result is before they start; so why watch? Racing intrigue thrives on competition and uncertainty. Horses need to brought together; now the 14 B.C. divisions and multitude of tracks are keeping them apart.

Never to receive much luck from the heavens NYRA also drew the cold and rainy combo from the weather hopper; conditions that are sure to further decimate attendance. Those that stay away will have plenty of company. Nothing speaks to the failure of racing more than the attendance numbers for a non-TV day at Belmont Park. These five Grade I races will bring out an estimated 7-8K in attendance. The second biggest race card in New York City and attendance is a more pathetic number than the field sizes. Some politician will try to fix this with slot subsidies. This is no answer but I understand that it is almost compulsory to install them to "keep up with the Jones'". A game with no fans that depends on slot subsidies will not survive. In the same way that a family on long term welfare will disintegrate into moral degeneracy a game on welfare will disintegrate too . The slots band-aid can not support a sport that has no public interest. Sooner or later the rug of slots welfare will be pulled out from under the game which will expose a wasted carcass. More must be done to restore the game to a healthy size.

Why are these field sizes being decimated? Could it be redundancy in stakes races? Deserted tracks putting up sizable purses to run races that nobody watches or cares about? While Belmont runs the Beldame, Philly Park will host the Cotillion the same day. Instead of a clash of Careless Jewel and Music Note; the race fan can sleep through two odds-on borefest five filly fields. While Belmont runs the Jockey Club Gold Cup, Hawthorne will run the Hawthorne Gold Cup at the same distance. If those cups are not empty enough some of the liquid has to be sent over to the Hoosier state for the Indiana Derby. Another competitor for dirt route colts that could have ran in Chicago or New York is the Ohio Derby also run the same day. Don't forget the Meadowlands just opened up and they too will run a series of stakes races that competes with the Belmont program.


The frustrating part is that it seems like there is nothing anyone can do about these fields getting chopped into smaller and smaller pieces. The market pressure is there to fold some of these tracks and restore field size. Handles have crashed as horseplayers head to the exits and funeral homes. However slot welfare is keeping many of these venues propped up and field size remains depressed. We can only watch from the sidelines as the intrigue and fans are sucked out of the sport like a door was opened up on a pressurized airplane mid-flight.

A really good example of a short field borefest is Sunday's Kelso at Belmont. This Kelso Mile is an underwhelming race. This race looks like it competed with the Cliffhanger at Meadowlands for entries , which also has a smallish field. Combine these two heats and we have a decent prep for the B.C. Mile. Decent races are hard to find in the era were tracks like the Meadowlands are propped up by Atlantic City subsidies causing all races to have small fields and zero intrigue.


The leading B.C Mile Prep in New York will at best produce a 40-1 chance if the connections choose to enter the B.C. Mile. It it did not help that the B.C. also sliced and diced this group by introducing a dirt mile. Not only are races getting split but whole divisions are getting split. Further divisions are being opened along surface lines. The three surface split among turf, poly and dirt horses has exasperated the situation. It is almost like a perfect storm has taken shape. A combination of too much slot subsidized racing, too many B.C. divisions and the new poly surface has sliced and diced the fields to a point critical point where human interest is lost.


Expanding racing by division is a horrible trend that must be reversed. The results have been dramatically terrible. Perhaps some of the dirt mile bound horses could have stayed on the turf and ran in the Kelso. The people in charge should return to their business school education and review the chapter on mergers. Someone needs to take the lead and show this industry how to merge these fields instead of expanding to an unsupportable size.