The end of the year is often a time for reflection. As the racing calendar winds down, the staff here at the Paulick Report sit down and begins plotting out editorial content for the new year – new subjects that merit our trademark investigative reporting, and new series that we hope will enlighten readers or brighten their day.
In 2021, we let out some of our collective angst after the annual planning meeting by writing a satirical list of stories that you won't see in our pages, along with reasons they were rejected. We continued the tradition in 2022. The process of composing satire is so cathartic (and had such a good response from our readers) that we've decided to continue the tradition. Some of the rejected series ideas were completely fictional of course, but some were actually (briefly) (jokingly) discussed in some form or another.
Mainstream Media Rebuttal: A weekly series finally putting into practice what so many people seem to believe – that it's our job to run point-by-point corrections to mainstream media coverage we did not do. The fact that the mainstream reporters/audiences will almost certainly not see such a series is, uh, not the point, somehow. Rejected because: With everything horse racing needs to worry about, whether 60 Minutes correctly designated betamethasone as “restricted” rather than “banned” is the least offensive mistake anyone has made in mainstream coverage of the sport's problems in a long, long time. This kind of correction would be the job of a public relations firm and not a trade publication anyway, and we're not interested in the job. It is, frankly, way too much work to serve as racing's public relations organization. Which is probably why no one – not the NTRA, and not The Jockey Club – has made a sustained effort to do it.
They Didn't Ask Me What I Thought! At last, a solution to the problem we've encountered since the passage of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, which prompted alphabet soup groups we'd honestly forgotten about to complain their input hadn't been included in the rule construction process. Or that they hadn't been included enough. Whatever that means. Rejected because: This would be an endless loop of comments, responses to comments, and responses to responses. Besides, if you've ever read the Federal Trade Commission's printout of comments from these very groups on each set of proposed HISA rule changes, you'll have basically gotten the gist anyway. And probably a headache.
Horseplayers' Takeout Index: This one we really have talked about at different times through the years. Readers write to us periodically and ask us to pick up where the Horseplayers Association of North America left off some years ago and maintain a track-by-track list of takeout for different wagers. We'd love to see that list, too. Rejected because: As much as we would like to provide this service, many tracks are not inclined to provide this information to us when asked and there is no uniform disclosure requirement with state racing commissions that would enable us to glean this from public records requests, either. Much like the rebate deals offered to computer-assisted wagering teams, it's not in the best business interests of some entities to have this out there, because they must know it will compare unfavorably with some of their competition.
Who Props Up The Sport Today? We've had so many different groups (horseplayers, breeders, owners, tracks, etc.) claim to be the sole economic reason racing continues forth that it would be good to have consensus, if only for 24 hours at a time. We will create a Wheel of Fortune-style graphic to be virtually spun at the start of each day, with the selected group being designated the “most important” for that day's coverage. Rejected because: Just as there can only be one winner of a horse race (usually) there can only be one “most important” – despite all the aforementioned groups desperately wanting participation trophies. No one would be able to stand being left out, which would sort of suggest that the racing economy is a diverse ecosystem with equally-important parts, but what do we know?
Ye Olde Veterinary Techniques: If you've never picked up a century-old veterinary manual, you might find the contents astonishing and horrifying. As is true in human medicine, it's fascinating to see what early practitioners had right and what they got wrong back in the days before anybody knew any better. We once read a passage explaining that the best way to get medication in a horse was to mold the substance into a ball and slingshot it back into the horse's throat, which we can only assume was suggested by someone who never tried it. Rejected because: The late, great Denise Steffanus warned us that the trouble with this series idea is that some fool out there would actually try some of the concoctions or strategies that we would be writing about from a historical interest perspective, no matter how many “absolutely do not try this” disclaimers we added.
How To Breed For Durability: A how-to guide offering a once-and-for-all mandate on how to make the breed sounder, for every mare, every stallion, and every breeder. Rejected because: We strangely could not get pedigree or bloodstock experts to provide guidance on this. Everyone kept saying boring things like “Well, how are you measuring durability?” and “It really depends on the mare” and “You realize any breeding strategy takes generations to prove out, right?” How are we supposed to move ill-defined mountains in an instant without the aid of generalized advice? To Twitter!
I've Got The Cheater Right Here: In which we write a personality profile of every single trainer we've ever been told by an anonymous emailer is cheating in some undefined way. We'd include quotes from the would-be tipsters, which usually feature phrases like “Because I just know it!” or “Well, look at their statistics! It's obvious!” Rejected because: We do not have the resources to write about literally every licensee in this country who has ever won a horse race.
Did He Do 'Enough'? We ask a panel of randomly-chosen experts to review a horse's race record with his name and connections obscured and ask whether the male horse has “done enough” to either 1) be retired to the stud barn or 2) (if a gelding) to be retired to a new job. No one will actually consult with the connections to learn about the horse's soundness or training progress, because where would the fun be in doing any research before passing judgment? Rejected because: It seems the answer varies considerably by horse and emotion, and not by any hard and fast rules. Some hard-knocking geldings are heroes for running past the age of four, while others are considered desperate welfare cases if they're still running at five. Meanwhile, stud prospects never can (or do) seem to run enough to satisfy anybody; if they're successful enough that the insurance cost probably got prohibitive, they were retired “too soon” and if they kept running “long enough” it's because they're “not accomplished enough.” We worry the panelists could eventually become targets for social media trolling. And we're sure these horses' connections could tell you that that's no fun.
The post Rejected: 2023 Paulick Report Story Ideas That Didn’t Make The Cut appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
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