Most races are $10K claiming and under, full of horses that shouldn’t run and couldn’t run without drugs, ruthless owners, sloppy or inexistent pre-race exams and desperate jockeys.

If racing had a central authority, it could decide to cap claiming purses at 50% above claiming prices nationwide. States without slots and racinos wouldn’t have to worry about loosing horses to racino states.

Quality racing and fair competition could be promoted by redirecting purse monies currently wasted on cheap claiming races to allowance and stakes races, special bonuses for homebreds, rested horses, older horses, longer races, sound horsemanship, equine safety and welfare, doping prevention and testing, renovating grandstands, attracting and pampering fans and bettors and last but not least maintaining track surfaces in top shape.

Without drugs on race day, horses that shouldn’t run wouldn’t, thus preventing many catastrophic injuries which increase as claiming prices decrease. Shorter and fewer meetings run during pleasant seasons would make quality racing more feasible to offer and more attractive.

quick story my first race mare running in Vancouver and Portland runs second in portland twice and one race was 28 to 1 sent money for training cost to my trainer and asked to to take 100 and put it to win and place and he say he won’t do it but bet homself which i find out months later because he forgets and brags later to me that he bet and won that day but my bet was not placed. Liars always forget down the road, anyway on to Vancouver she is running in maidens and I bet and handicap races and there where three mares that seemed better then her so she had to wait till they won and moved on so she would break her maiden and along comes that day so my mare “two time belle” looks like the better mare of the field and runs on the front and looks to be the easy winner but pulls up in the front shute and hmmmm trainer has his own horse in race running a route which never won anyway but for all appearances mine was the rabbit and his was to attempt to take advantage of it. The people at the off track betting where we watched were disgusted with what appeared to be a fix including me Upon Immediatly Phoning my trainer he indicated she had been hit in the face by a piece of dirt while running on the front but I notice in the replay they had that circle bit thing in her mouth and had not seen he run her with that before and it just looks like the jockey pulled her up. Course I went and took the horse and had to pay all the training bills some twice as the stewarts took his side and I really agree that they need to be more honest and not fix races left a bad taste in my mouth for quite a while and it hurts the sport large.

My trainer i ended up with is a great man and has many canadian helper mostly young girls whom love horses as do him and his wife and i hope to bring him some of my stock that will win for the two of us so ther are good and bad everywhere but the problem is bigger and to much greeed and not enough community and support of all of us as a group in the best interest of the sport!!!

but ya great talk and i did not realize the worker issue was such a hot topic but in these times of job loss i guess it is but it is not the biggest nor the central problem just one problem

so whip or not?

two year old or not?

cap on stallion breeding or not?

better purse break down or not?

better breeding rewards thoughout the ranks or Not?

cheaper registation cost ie Jockey club i have an unregistored four year old stallion i would like to race and they want $2,000 american to registor him WHY????
I was not sure how he would turn out sa i did own the mare before he was born but did not see him till he was 18 months and was not sure he was worth the expense and did not have the money or means at that time but 2,000.00 to register why?????

slots make fans or money or cause loss of fans >>>??? tough question because we all have theroies but let’s hear then and send this to the people that need to see it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

talk More pleaase!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The website above if for a rescue barn in NJ that started the business because they saw many horses which didn’t have what it took to be successful and were sent to the track anyway where they broke down and later, met bad conditions after being “sold because they didn’t make money.”

I personally agree with the comments below that were cut and pasted from another person. Please read this and what I have added as a person involved in horse rescue, rehab, and later adoption. The barn sees many, many, TB’s that have broken down at the track at a very young age because they were bred indiscriminately and had no racing talent, and should never have been sent to the track. They were bred and sent to racing because, the owner says, “well, that is what I do, so the horse will race.” This is a key problem in the racing industry. It costs hundreds of dollars to breed and raise a horse which will probably never win anything. This needs to be changed to save the industry.

These are the comments cut and pasted that were left by someone else who agrees with me.

“The industry is looking to fix their problems incorrectly. Let’s use the anti-inflammory drug, corticosteriods as an example. It is important to realize that corticosteroids are not a cure for any disease process. Their anti-inflammatory effects can quiet a variety of inflammatory conditions, but relief is most often only temporary. In the treatment of conditions such as arthritis, corticosteroids can help alleviate inflammation of the joint. However, the arthritis is not cured by the treatment. Corticosterods can also help control the abnormal responses seen with allergic reactions, but they do not desensitize the horse to whatever it is he is allergic too.

Americans are turned off to the sport for a great number of reasons. Many of these reasons that we are all well aware of, includes drug abuse, racing fixing, breakdowns, etc, and have turned fans away same as some other sports industries with their problems. A decline in any lasting rivalries, in favour of premature retirement(which I credit mainly to greed) to the breeding shed, has hurt the sport as well.”

Regarding her/his last comment, this is what I have to add as a person involved in the industry indirectly. Unfortunately, when these animals go to the track and break down or become unruly because of pain, they are just given drugs until they just can’t work anymore. Then, as everyone who is involved in the industry knows, they meet a horrible fate in the back of a slaughterhouse truck where they are without food, water, and, if they are on the bottom of a double, are urinated upon for those four days. This happened to a former Kentucky Derby winner who, after being non-productive to his owner, was sold to slaughter, like thousands of these horses are.

People know about this abuse and they are just turned off by the sport because of it. Sometimes an abuse is that of breeding itself. Thousands of horses are bred each year and hundreds of these will never make it. They were bred because someone has a barn full of breeding horses and says, “Well, that is what we do, we breed TB’s.” Another situation that is often happening, too often is that someone has a track horse that has broken down and says, “well, I can breed them.” and they do. It didn’t matter to these people that their horse probably broke down at the track because his conformation didn’t support the rigors of being galloped every day as fast as she can and was not good at all for the horse. The public is aware of these abuses of animals in racing, and is just turned off and have gone away from the sport.

If you want to save racing, then what you need to do is educate those involved to proper care, training, and racing itself,(don’t race a horse on drugs like bute and others), just because they can’t race without it. If they can’t race without drugs to mask injury, arthritis, and other conditions, then owners should be required to retire them and care for them for the rest of their lives. Maybe if the owners were forced to do this, indiscriminate breeding which is directly hurting the industry by causing the above issues would stop and there would probably be a comeback.

Only when we stop the abuses, hiring of illegals or cheap labor, and other industry practices, will we bring racing back. A barn in NJ that I know of has two rescued TB’s in residence that would have met a bad end. One of them did meet a bad fate after the track, but we took her before she went to an unfortunate place and when we got her, she was in very poor condition. She is fine and happy now. The other would have met a bad fate too, but he is now fine as well. These are the exception to the rule. There are not too many of these animals around because of the reasons above. Let’s stop the abuses of these wonderful animals and their indiscriminate breeding so we can save the industry.