Making things right

We moved five more times in the following eight years, sampling various states in the Midwestern and Heartland regions; for two years I even lived by the marshy coasts of Georgia. Curiously each time we landed in a locale that was distant from any racetrack so my enthusiasm for the sport had to be sustained by weekly publications and the budding world of the Internet.

As a teenager of the ‘90s, the era of racing’s elite heroes –the weight-bearers, the heavy campaigners, the frequent shippers—ended long before it could be appreciated by my generation of fans. Gone are the Kelsos, the Foregos, the Tom Fools, and Spectacular Bids of yesteryear. I was just over three months old when dual-surface wonder John Henry retired as the world’s richest racehorse in July of 1985.

Things looked up towards the end of the decade when Pennsylvania-bred Smarty Jones burst onto the racing scene in 2004 as an undefeated three-year-old. Triple Crown hopes were high after the colt annexed the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, but his bid to become the first Triple Crown winner since 1978 fell short by a length when Birdstone pulled a sizeable upset in the Belmont. Smarty Jones came out of the race with bruising to his fetlocks joints but owner Roy Chapman remained adamant that fans would see the chestnut colt race again, citing races like the Dubai World Cup as goals.

"We don't want him to go out that way. We want him to go out the hero that he is. And if it takes racing when he's a four-year-old, I hope he will be able to do it,” Chapman declared just days after the race.

But less than two months later came the news that Smarty Jones had been retired, syndicated weeks earlier as a stallion for nearly $40 million.

“I don't see anyway he can earn on the racetrack in a year what he can earn next spring in the breeding shed,” added trainer John Servis. “If it were any other horse, you'd turn him out and bring him back to the track in late October and start building back up his conditioning but…you have the emotional trauma if anything should happen to him.”

But noted and highly esteemed equine veterinarian Larry Bramlage, who examined the cold firsthand had this to say:

“The risks are minor…we bring horses back from this type of injury [to race again] all the time. The prognosis for full recovery is excellent. There's really nothing to worry about.”

Apparently hypocrisy also runs deep in the sport as well – take for example Cash Is King Stable, who a year later ran Afleet Alex to pulsating victories in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes before the colt was stricken with a career-ending injury. Regarding the colt’s fans, Cash Is King managing partner Chuck Zacney said matter of factly, “I don’t want it to be like Smarty Jones,” before promptly selling the recently retired colt a few days later to Gainesway Farm, a notoriously un-fan-friendly operation that does not allow visitors.

The sales industry wields some influential power over racing, as it far more lucrative for owners to sell a hot young three-year-old to a stud farm than race him as an older horse. But do you breed to breed or breed to race? The sport of kings died long ago, now replaced with the sport of greed.

Is it possible to have too much emphasis placed on the Triple Crown? Successful sires Storm Cat, Broad Brush, Gone West, Kingmambo, and Elusive Quality, to name a few, did not win or even place in any of the three-year-old spring classics. The numbers would indicate that the series itself is not the most precise gauge of sire ability.

Prominent owner Barry Irwin, also stricken with this folie a deux, stated that, “To many people, and I happen to be one of them, the point of racing is to prove which one is best so that he can go to stud and attempt to better the breed. Once they have proven who is best, there is no further point to racing a horse. It is more important to the breed to get them to stud.”

Irwin, who heads the Team Valor syndicate racing, attracts newcomers to racing by offering shares in racehorses purchased from various owners and breeders or from auction. Yet one has to wonder how many clients he has lured into the sport with his “race to breed” angle.

Those who stand by Irwin’s viewpoint only see the financial gain. Forget accolades and prestige; the greater glory is retiring good horses early. And who really gets shut out? The fans, and the entire industry suffers for it. I wonder if Irwin was singing the same praises of premature retirements when his beloved Swaps was pillaging California stakes during the summer of 1956, more than –get this!—a year after his victory in racing's most coveted jewel, the Kentucky Derby.

No other sport quite looks down on its fans like racing does. Because they are not employed by the industry, many involved in racing feel they have no right to voice their opinions. Instead, racing shoots itself in the foot by chastising and ultimately driving away its few remaining fans. There is a generation of young people who enthusiastically follow the sport, many of whom wager regularly, and they should be welcomed into the industry – all, they are the future of racing, a fact that most of the crotchety old fogies running the sport today seem oblivious to.