Quote:
Originally Posted by highnote
So let me reiterate some solutions I mentioned because I can't remember everything I've written:
1. Reduce the number of race days.
2. Increase the number of grass races.
3. Start a handicap division.
4. Eliminate all race day medication.
So which one of these ideas is radical, absurd, or unrealistic?
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OK, here you go...
1 ) NYRA has done some of this to anyone paying attention. However, you can't simply eliminate Winter racing, or great chunks of days, without driving a significant portion of your participants away, which will very likely result in them never coming back. Many of your participants need Winter racing to make enough money to sustain themselves through the warmer months when the racing is much more competitive. It's a delicate eco-system, and simply cutting chunks of race days from your calendar will damage your product going forward, not improve it.
2 ) We card a significant number of turf races at NYRA as we have two courses at every track ( we just built a second one at Aqueduct ). You can't eliminate dirt racing altogether, as for about four months a year you can't run on the grass, and thus need dirt horses in your population. As it is, because we run so many turf races, it is hard to fill the dirt races in the Winter. Also, turf racing is very weather sensitive, and carding too many turf races can cause your cards to get destroyed in the event of rain, something that happened quite a bit in 2018. While you can try to protect turf races with MTOs, if you lose too many turf races, these MTOs will not be able to run in future carded dirt races, further reducing those fields going forward. It's an extremely delicate balance, and many would say we card too many turf races already.
3 ) Unless you are a horse alchemist ( if you are, you will be in high demand ) I don't even know what this means. You can't simply "start" a division....you need the players. To be honest, handicap races have gone away because people don't want to run in those races, so creating a division out of thin air of horses that won't even run, even if they existed, makes little to no sense. You can say this is some sort of solution on your part, but it's not. The supposed "handicap division" is in disarray this year, in case you haven't noticed. We wish it to be better and more robust....but you can't make that happen out of thin air.
4 ) Eliminating all race day medication is a goal/crusade of some people. I'm not weighing in on how I feel about that, but if you think that will strengthen field size, you are kidding only yourself. Regardless, this is not a "solution" as much as an opinion.
You write a LOT of words, and maybe your intentions are good, but that doesn't mean they make sense. You also continue to insult me with ageist remarks ( yes, you have bigotry issues ) and suggestions that I have no solutions. This is also untrue. My solutions are to educate and create a more entertaining environment. I try my best to do this each and every day through a variety of mediums. I am sure I am frequently unsuccessful, but to suggest I offer nothing is as incorrect as it is insulting.
Just because you say something is a solution doesn't make that so.
