The John Henry Turf Classic is the race of the week this week. This is a grade 2 event on the Santa Anita down the hill turf course going 1 and ¼ mile for a purse of $200,000. Santa Anita has a very big opening weekend, and there are 7 total stakes on the card […]
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Long-time Delaware Park steward Fritz Burkhardt passed away in Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday, Sept. 22. He was 85.
With exception of a brief stint serving as a racing official for the Emirates Racing Authority in Abu Dhabi in the mid-1990s, the native of Baltimore, Maryland had served has a steward at Delaware Park for the Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission from 1987 until 2019.
Burkhardt also worked in varied and numerous positions within in the industry including managing Abacus Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado for Broadway producer Mary K. Frank, he was an assistant to trainer Roger Cornell, steward at Rillito Downs, a trainer, an agent and as a young man worked as a houndsman at the Howard County Hunt Club.
“He really was an amazing man and he lived a fascinating life,” said John Mooney, the Executive Director of Racing at Delaware Park. “He was very devoted to animals, particularly horses. He had a very thorough understanding of the race horse and appreciated all the individuals who worked with race horses. He was a great friend, companion and mentor to so many people in the sport. The Delaware Park family and the racing industry has lost one of our champions. He will be missed.”
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TVG, America's horse racing network and leading ADW platform, will be live on site at Santa Anita for a loaded opening weekend featuring seven Breeders' Cup “Win and You're In” races including the Awesome Again Stakes (GI), a qualifying race for the $6 million Breeders' Cup Classic (GI) featuring a showdown between two of the top older horses in the country, Maximum Security and Improbable.
There will be expert analysis and exclusive interviews on site at Santa Anita from Todd Schrupp, Britney Eurton and Christina Blacker. They will be joined by Simon Bray and Mike Joyce who will be contributing to the broadcast remotely.
On Saturday, there will be five Breeders' Cup Challenge races on the star-studded eleven race card – the $100,000 Speakeasy Stakes (Juvenile Turf Sprint), the $200,000 Chandelier Stakes (Juvenile Fillies), the $300,000 Rodeo Drive Stakes (Filly and Mare Turf), the $300,000 Awesome Again Stakes (Classic) and the $300,000 American Pharoah Stakes (TVG Juvenile).
The Awesome Again Stakes (GI) will feature two of the stars of the Bob Baffert barn – 2019 Eclipse champion three-year-old Maximum Security and multiple Grade 1 winner Improbable. Maximum Security will be reunited with regular rider Luis Saez and comes into this race off of a victory in the TVG Pacific Classic (GI) in August. Improbable was last seen notching his second consecutive Grade 1 of the year in the Whitney Stakes (GI) at Saratoga.
On Sunday, the action continues with the $200,000 Zenyatta Stakes (Distaff) and the $200,000 Santa Anita Sprint Championship (Sprint). The Breeders' Cup World Championships will be held on November 6 and 7 at Keeneland.
Fans of international racing can tune in on Friday and Saturday morning as Candice Hare hosts the racing from Newmarket which will feature two Breeders' Cup Challenge Series races – the Shadwell Rockfel Stakes (Juvenile Fillies Turf) and the Juddmonte Royal Lodge Stakes (Juvenile Turf).
TVG's Caleb Keller will be live trackside at Remington Park on Sunday for the track's premier race, the $200,000 Oklahoma Derby (GIII). The race has attracted a field of nine sophomores including graded stakes winner Shared Sense who has been installed as the morning line favorite at odds of 5-2 for trainer Brad Cox.
TVG will also feature racing from marquee venues across the country including Gulfstream Park, Monmouth Park and more.
The post TVG Featuring Live Coverage Of Seven ‘Win And You’re In’ Races From Santa Anita This Weekend appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
by Thoroughbred Idea Foundation
This is the final installment of a year-long series we called #FreeDataFriday. We have greatly appreciated your attention and feedback. To share your thoughts with us, please contact us by clicking here.
In March 2019, the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation published a white paper calling for Equibase to do four things:
There have been few positive developments directly from Equibase on these initiatives.
Fortunately, harping on this topic has yielded far more attentiveness to various outlets when it comes to free data. Some tracks have released free past performances for select races (Volume 35). One reported to us thousands of downloads of free PPs from a single day of racing. It has been, and will continue to be, appreciated.
#FreeDataFriday was about drawing attention to the need of racing to embrace data, an improved approach to information delivery as a path to grow wagering and attention on racing. Regardless of Equibase’s actual behavior, this needs to happen.
We occasionally focused on other sports which are doing this in better ways, some directly connected to wagering, too. This series also highlighted data, some old and some new, designed to focus our followers on the plight of racing’s troubled present, and how hopefully to change it in the future, for the better.
Equibase is an incredibly valuable asset for the racing industry, a legacy to the decision making of its founders, and they have undoubtedly performed a useful service to the sport.
With a firm foundation built three decades ago, we believe now is the time to take a giant leap ahead, to transform, offering the data to a public customer far different than the ones that engaged the sport in 1990. The current and potential racing wagering customer possesses programming and processing power the likes of which could never have been envisioned in those days. Enabling public access to racing’s vast data sets would signal a new era for the sport.
Freely available data will grow handle, increasing racing’s competitiveness for new customers and enhancing the retention of current customers. This is a direct benefit to the tracks, who currently enjoy the spoils of data sales. Growing handle several percentage points replaces the dividends tracks received via the data business, and which some also receive as ADW operators and bet processors. Growing it by several more covers Equibase’s costs.
Equibase could take racing ahead into this new era. We believe this will spark participation and engagement. We want racing to have a seat at the analytics table, joining the many mass-market and even niche sports and games which have and continue to benefit from open and available data. How exciting it would be to unfurl the collective intelligence of tech-savvy bettors, fans, researchers and academics on a sport that desperately needs growth.
Equibase, essentially, holds a monopoly on racing’s data. If you want to register a Thoroughbred for racing or breeding, owners relinquish all of their data rights to The Jockey Club (TJC) and its subsidiaries through its registration process. The terms of use on TJC’s website outline this:
“You agree to grant to TJC a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, sub licensable, perpetual license, with the right to sub-license, to reproduce, distribute, transmit, create derivative works of, publicly display and publicly perform any materials and other information (including, without limitation, ideas contained therein for new or improved products and services) you submit to the Website or by e-mail to TJC by all means and in any medium now known or hereafter developed. You agree that you shall have no recourse against TJC for any alleged or actual infringement or misappropriation of any proprietary right in your communications to TJC.”
Register your horse and TJC can do as it pleases with the data your horses accrue.
Make no mistake, when Equibase was created, it was viewed as a sustainable source of information collection–by the industry, for the industry, not some evil empire. In 1992, as we cited in Volume 2 of #FreeDataFriday, then vice-chairman of TJC William S. Farish offered a noble take on the need for the industry to maintain racing’s data. There had been a fear that if the data was controlled by a private entity, racing’s records could be lost. Here are some of Farish’s remarks from the 1992 Jockey Club Round Table:
“Before Equibase was formed, Thoroughbred racing stood out alone as just about the only major professional sport which was not responsible for its own records…The Thoroughbred industry has the responsibility and obligation to maintain control of those records, and make sure they are made widely available in whatever way suits the best interests of the industry.”
Responsibility. Obligation. Widely available. Best interests.
The world of racing, betting and information delivery has changed substantially since those remarks, nearly 30 years ago.
Equibase has not evolved to the needs of the modern industry, to present-day horseplayers and horsemen. Serious efforts to reform and modernize are needed to make good on Mr. Farish’s salient recommendation from 1992.
#FREEDATAFRIDAY
To borrow from Bill Gates, if we approached some of racing’s problems similar to the way he addresses myriad issues, perhaps there is some hope we can have a brighter future for our sport. The two questions Gates asks: “Who has dealt with this problem well? And what can we learn from them?”
In some parts of the racing world, significant amounts of data, and past performances, are free, or at least less expensive than they are here. Two of the notable locations–Australia and Hong Kong, jurisdictions where racing, at least as measured through wagering participation, continues to grow.
Data alone is not going to change our future, but it is one element of a needed elixir of renovation for our industry.
We conclude this series with a reprint of the comments of Gary Crispe, the CEO of RacingandSports.com, an Australia-based news and information website which includes a plethora of free data for horse racing around the world, including past performances from many jurisdictions. Crispe offered these remarks when TIF spoke with him while researching our white paper, “Embracing a Future with Free Racing Data.”
“There is an infatuation to pricing racing data, but that sort of model seems to ignore the fundamental business of the sport. Data and its derivatives should be used to drive betting.
“Outside of a few relationships with some big clients, nearly all of the data we supply is free to our site’s visitors. We offer full form guides [past performances] for races in 17 jurisdictions around the world, which includes speed maps [pace projections] and a whole host of value-added services. They come in a variety of formats, some of which can be tailored to the site user’s preferences.”
Why wouldn’t North American racing want that?
Well, “racing” might want it and need it, but Equibase and the tracks have turned data into big business off the investments of owners and horseplayers.
Combining this data access with more efficient pricing within wagering markets is a recipe for significantly increased bettor participation–a new way forward which all of the industry should support.
CLICK HERE to read the TIF Biennial Report.
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