illin

There's a lot to like in racing, and of course there's a lot to despise. Racing has much bigger problems than what I'm about to discuss, but I'd like to exorcise some demons as the calendar turns to 2010.

1. Supposed regional bias in Horse of the Year voting.

Count Liz Mullen of Sports Business Journal among those who think that East Coast voters will conspire to deny Horse of the Year honors to Zenyatta even though everyone knows the Breeders' Cup Classic winner is clearly more deserving.

I'm willing to allow that more people who live East of the Mississippi River will vote for Rachel Alexandra than will vote for Zenyatta, but two Kentucky residents, Marty McGee of Daily Racing Form and Frances Karon of Trainer Magazine, are both voting for Zenyatta, and another DRF employee, Bill Tallon of Ontario, also is.

I'm also willing to allow that if Rachel Alexandra were owned by Phipps and trained by Shug then a bias could potentially be in play with East Coast voters, but if Rachel is part of any region, then she shades more Kentucky than anywhere else since owner Jess Jackson, trainer Steve Asmussen, and jockey Calvin Borel support Fair Grounds and Churchill as much as they do NYRA.

But the bottom line to me is, Will any California resident vote for Rachel Alexandra? How can people claim "East Coast bias" when no West Coast voter will cast a vote for anyone but the West Coast horse?

DRF and NTRA do not release the names of their voters let alone the actual votes, but the NTWA does, and I'm very anxious to see how each region votes.

2. social networking snobs

Congratulations on the five-year anniversary of your blog and signing up for Twitter. That doesn't make you a guru of the craft who is going to turn the racing industry around.

I started my first blog in August 2001, and the guy I was emulating had published his since 1999. I love online media because we can all learn from each other. No one has all the answers, but nearly everyone has something to offer.

That "nearly everyone" includes even those who work in more traditional media or within the racing industry. Some of us "get it," too, or are trying to!

Jackson was gutsiest

If there were a fan vote component to the Eclipse Awards as there is for the Cartier Awards in Europe, then it would be tough to envision a scenario in which Zenyatta did not secure that block of the voting for 2009 Horse of the Year.

Indeed, Zenyatta was the overwhelming choice for best horse to race in 2009 (a list that included not only Rachel Alexandra but also Sea The Stars) in the third annual Thoroughbred Times "Best of" poll.

These types of polls serve as an interesting study in the recency effect given that Zenyatta raced twice since Rachel Alexandra last competed. I am surprised that Rachel Alexandra would be completely out of mind considering she is still in training, but how else to explain the choice of Zenyatta in the Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1) as the gutsiest decision by an owner?

The Rachel Alexandra-Zenyatta debate is a good one that will continue to play out until one of their owners receives the Horse of the Year trophy on January 18. I am voting for Rachel Alexandra in that category, but I can understand why anyone would vote for Zenyatta depending on which criteria you most value. If the Breeders’ Cup is the most important race to you, then Zenyatta is an easy choice.

That said, I cannot understand why anyone would choose Jerry and Ann Moss’s decision to race Zenyatta in the Classic as gutsier than Jess Jackson’s decision to acquire Rachel Alexandra for $10-million, along with co-owner Harold T. McCormick, and run her in the BlackBerry Preakness Stakes (G1) less than two weeks later.

When Zenyatta started her five-year-old campaign as an undefeated champion, trainer John Shirreffs said that Zenyatta would likely cap her season and career in the Breeders’ Cup Ladies’ Classic (G1). As the year went on and Rachel Alexandra kept winning, it likely became obvious to Zenyatta’s connections that the only chance they had at Horse of the Year was to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic going 1 1/4 miles against males, a distance at which Rachel Alexandra did not compete.

Zenyatta won the Breeders’ Cup in thrilling fashion, and I can understand the vote as that being the best race in North America this year, but the decision to race her there was more sporting than it was gutsy.

Sure, the entry fees are more for the Classic than the Ladies’ Classic, but Jackson and McCormick spent more than $10-million to get Rachel Alexandra in the gate just a year after Eight Belles’ breakdown following her runner-up finish to eventual champion Big Brown in the 2008 Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1).

That is, there was much more than money at stake for Jackson and even the whole industry in the Preakness. Jackson was putting his reputation, good name, and the health of the entire Thoroughbred industry on the line. Even Jackson’s wine business would have likely felt the sting of media scrutiny had something bad happened to Rachel Alexandra in the Preakness. To be fair, more than Horse of the Year was at stake for Zenyatta. Her connections put her unbeaten streak on the line against tougher competition, and a terrible performance coupled with the possibility of a big win by Music Note in the Ladies’ Classic the previous day could have even cost Zenyatta a second championship.

Still, Jackson had more to lose.

One gutsy thing that both owners did was agree to write an essay about why their horse should be Horse of the Year. For a first-person account of Jackson and Jerry Moss waxing poetic about their prides and joys, be sure to check out the December 26 edition of Thoroughbred Times.

Permanent Breeders' Cup site odds (15% takeout)

Breeders' Cup Ltd. could announce a permanent site for its World Championships program as early as for the 2011 event, sparking rampant speculation as to what the site could be.

Before getting into what that site should be, I want to applaud the Breeders' Cup for moving in this direction regardless of what the site ends up being. As a Turf writer who travels to the Breeders' Cup each year, I would certainly miss dining at faraway locations and talking horses with locals at various watering holes, but the trade-off from a business standpoint seems worth it.

Even if an out-of-the-way place such as Sam Houston Race Park were chosen, the benefits of Houston knowing it can count on the event each year would be huge. Corporate sponsorships both on the local and national level would increase, the track could retrofit its property to adapt to the Breeders' Cup needs.

The Breeders' Cup has staged its event at ten locations in its 26-year history and each of those locations has pros and cons. A permanent location would allow the Breeders' Cup and the location to focus on the pros and ditch the cons on a long-term basis.

As for who could possibly be a permanent host, I've come up with 17 entities for a mythical Breeders' Cup Derby with a 15% takeout. Italics indicate a facility that could conduct night racing.

Arlington Park, 100-to-1
Belmont Park, 10-to-1 (from 7-to-1)
Calder Race Course, 250-to-1 (from 200-to-1)
Churchill Downs, 1-to-2 (from 2-to-5)
Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, 200-to-1 (from 100-to-1)
Fair Grounds Race Course, 200-to-1 (from 150-to-1)
Gulfstream Park, 150-to-1 (from 100-to-1)
Hialeah Park, 50-to-1 (from 25-to-1)
Hollywood Park, 250-to-1 (from 200-to-1)
Keeneland Race Course, 5-to-1 (from 20-to-1)
Lone Star Park, 200-to-1
NJSEA track, 150-to-1 (from 100-to-1)
other NYRA, 200-to-1
Sam Houston Race Park, 250-to-1 (from 200-to-1)
Santa Anita Park, 6-to-1
Woodbine, 150-to-1
ALL OTHERS, 597-to-1 (from 415-to-1)

Odds updated at 4:52 p.m. EST on December 15 to reflect action on Keeneland Race Course.

Despite initial communication with the three favorites--Belmont, Churchill, and Santa Anita--indicating that Breeders' Cup had only approached Santa Anita about the idea, I just have to make Churchill Downs the overwhelming favorite because it rates high on nearly any metric you could want to use.

• It's capacity is among the highest. I'd say Belmont handles big crowds the best, but the big crowds don't show up to Big Sandy unless there's a Triple Crown on the line. Churchill routinely gets higher attendance and higher handle for its Breeders' Cup.
• Speaking of attendance, Churchill already has a dedicated following of ticket holders who own personal seat licenses, and I don't know of any reason why PSLs couldn't be structured to include the Breeders' Cup.
• More people involved in the horse industry would not have to travel to the event. Yes, California, New York, Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania etc. all have vibrant racing and breeding communities, but Kentucky is--at the very least--the North American center of the industry.
• Churchill Downs has lights. Breeders' Cup has tossed around the idea of conducting some races at night going back to 2007 when it considered running the inaugural Championship Friday races at Meadowlands. That never really went anywhere for that year, but the idea is bound to go somewhere in the coming years.

Santa Anita and Belmont are question marks in part because of geographic location. Churchill favors the East Coast a bit since it's in the Midwest, but it's certainly more neutral in that regard than any coastal location. Santa Anita (or any California facility) has the added question mark of a synthetic surface.

Keeneland is definitely interested in having the event, but I don't know that it's interested in having it permanently. Still, its president, Nick Nicholson, did travel to this year's event as the guest of Oak Tree Association President Sherwood Chillingworth.

"If we're going to have one of these I better figure out how it works," Nicholson said in October.

Hialeah I put on here because a lot of people really want to see it happen, but I just don't think it's in the cards. Still, I'd take your money if you want to bet on it.

All the others are longshots for sundry reasons. Sam Houston is the longshot that's most interesting to me because it's made a pitch for the event, is in a major market, and would probably make permanent improvements for what amounts to a one-week-a-year event.

If a permanent site is to help the Breeders' Cup achieve other goals such as more participation from the best horses--domestically and abroad--then Churchill is the site that makes the most sense to me.

My marketing idea

Sitting at the Sanf0rd-Orlando Kennel Club in May 2002 with a fellow horseplayer and Steinmaniac something caught our eye as we played the ponies and waited for dogs and simulcast jai alai (it was about 5 p.m. EDT, so we were between cards of a day-night greyhound doubleheader).

Calder Race Course had a dead heat for win, and the screen was blowing up! There were graphics, there was excitement from the announcer, this was big time.

I'm not a big fan of dead heats. The wannabe philosophical mathematician in me (I was a Math major once) says that two moving objects traveling at different speeds can't hit the same point at the exact same time. We just don't have the technology (or racing doesn't want to invest in such technology) to figure out a winner.

The gambler in me sees "winning" a dead heat as surviving a tie. It really is like kissing your sister. Yeah, I guess it's better than losing, but it's worse than winning, too. The worst feeling is betting a horse strictly to win, "surviving" the photo to earn a dead heat and then find out that the old ladies who bet to place and show won more than you did.

Still, Calder was on to something here because I was able to see beyond my hatred for the dead heat and appreciate that Calder's graphics and the announcer's excitement had attracted me to its signal. My friend and I immediately thought that all racetracks should be pulling out all stops for every dead heat.

Instead of just lighting up the words "dead heat" on the tote board, the track should have pyrotechnics erupting from the toteboard while spotlights come on a stage raising above the turf course (or infield or winner's circle).

"LADIES AND GENTLEMAN!" the announcer would bellow. "Please direct your attention to the infield tote board. We have a dead heat for show!" Immediately the Can-Can would start playing from all speakers while dancers (male and female because I know how Stronach's "vision" offends people) do a Dead Heat routine.

The track could sell sponsorships. "This Dead Heat is brought to you by Bill's heating and cooling. 'Don't let splitting your winnings burn you up, have Bill cool you down in the summer!'"

People would come to the track just in the hopes of seeing a dead heat. John Williams would be so moved by the extravaganza that he would write a suite just to accompany the spectacle once the can-can got old.

In some ways, I'm thankful that no one else has thought of this in the 7 1/2 years that my friend and I first did because this idea will make us rich and keep us flush with consulting work for years, but I do feel bad that the racing industry missed out on so many opportunities to engage the fan.