Robin Goodfellow’s Racing Tips: Best bets for Thursday, August 27
Sportsmail's racing expert Robin Goodfellow dishes out his tips for Thursday's meetings at Beverley, Sedgefield, Chelmsford and Lingfield.
Fans given green light to attend Doncaster racecourse for first time since sporting lockdown
Doncaster will host the first paying racegoers since racing went into lockdown in March after the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport gave the green light to the four-day St Leger meeting.
MJC President Sal Sinatra Talks Cleaning Up Racing On TDN Writers’ Room
In a sport crying out for more strict, no-nonsense regulators and administrators, Maryland Jockey Club president Sal Sinatra fits the bill. Just in the past week and a half, Sinatra has made major waves in the industry, first by calling for the eventual end to claiming races at The Jockey Club Round Table and then by busting Wayne Potts for “paper training” for a banned trainer in Maryland. Wednesday, Sinatra joined the TDN Writers’ Room presented by Keeneland as the Green Group Guest of the Week to discuss an array of issues plaguing racing and the steps, big and small, that can be taken to clean up the game for good.
“When I see forged health certificates, when I have repeated claims for not paying bills, when there’s theft, when I’m watching horses race and return and run under others’ names, [situations] that everybody’s aware of, action should’ve been before it gets to my desk,” Sinatra said of the challenges he faces as a head regulator. “Unfortunately, since I’ve been in Maryland, [Potts] is the sixth person I’ve actually tossed. And I don’t know why I seem to be the only one doing it.”
Sinatra went on to say that one of the reasons cheating trainers aren’t more severely punished is that they fill races, a byproduct of there being too much racing on the whole in America and specifically too much cheap claiming races.
“Coming from the racing secretary side, we’ve got too many races,” he said. “Most of these [cheating] guys run their horses a lot. They help you when you call them. So they’re kind of racing office favorites, and the gray area becomes not so gray when you need the horse to make six or seven to fill the entries and close.”
Sinatra added that while racing is making strides in certain areas of correcting itself, there remains one more basic long-term problem it hasn’t addressed: the morality of its participants.
“We’re all trying to make a living. We’re trying to be proud. We’re trying to clean our image as best as we can,” he said. “We have to make ourselves look better. We’re trying with the breakdowns. We’re trying with the medications. But there’s a character flaw. There has become a real character issue. There’s people in the game right now that–I hate to say it–but they shouldn’t be around animals, let alone horses.”
Sinatra caused a stir when he suggested at the Round Table that America should move toward a future without claiming races. He expounded on how a transition to that future could look.
“For one, we have too many categories for horses to enter into,” he said. “You got non-two, non-three, non-four, one win in six months, two wins in six months. I think a ratings system reduces that, so if you put two horses at a rating of 80, maybe a horse that only has three wins runs against a horse with nine wins. You could hypothetically replace starter allowances with these ratings races. There may be a way of combining claiming and letting people who don’t want to lose their horse run their horse against like horses.”
Sinatra further lamented the lack of growth in the worth of claimers over the years, despite inflation and higher purses, leading inevitably to animal welfare issues.
“We’ve created this arena, and especially with the [revenue from] slots, we never valued the horse part of it. When I worked at Monmouth in the mid-80s, the last race was always a Jersey-bred nickel [claimer]. And today the bottom is a Jersey-bred nickel. We’re talking 35 years later. That horse has to be worth a little more than that. But we keep it low so people can get in the game, and then the poor horse gets chewed up. We have to fix it.”
Sinatra said that a lot of racing’s ills come back to the core issue that has been discussed at length on the Writers’ Room in the past: an oversupply of races that exists despite the realities of declining foal crops and horses who run less frequently overall.
“A lot of things got broken down over time because we have too much racing, there’s too many opportunities and we’re trying to fill all this stuff with no supply,” he said. “That’s really the biggest problem. A horse used to run eight or nine times a year. And you have the same amount of stalls that aren’t filled as much. You do the math. Most of the tracks now are propped up by slot machines. Companies can afford to lose $5-10 million on racing when they’re printing money across the parking lot. It’s not good for our sport. So we need to clean it up. We need to look at the whole model and reboot or it’s going to go away.”
Elsewhere on the show, the writers recapped the weekend’s Grade I action and, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, applauded Churchill Downs for making the decision to race without spectators for the GI Kentucky Derby and broke down the Karl Broberg situation at Remington. Click here to watch the podcast, click here for the audio-only version.
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New Jersey Budget Proposal Cuts Out Racing Subsidy
A $32.4-billion budget proposal announced Tuesday by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy does not include a $20-million annual subsidy that has been split between the state’s Thoroughbred and harness industries.
The story was first reported by the website njonlinegambling.com.
The subsidy was signed into law in 2019 as a way to help New Jersey’s struggling tracks, the only tracks in the region that did not benefit from revenues from casinos. The bill called for $100 million in subsidies to be paid out over five years but also had a provision whereby it was subject to an annual review.
“With this funding, New Jersey can continue to offer one of the most exciting horse racing experiences in the nation, while also providing a boost to an industry that is integral to our economy,” Murphy said when signing the original bill.
Murphy’s budget proposal called for deep spending cuts as the state tries to deal with the financial hit it has taken due to the coronavirus. According to reports, the state has taken on an additional $4 billion in debt stemming from the pandemic.
The next step in the process is for the Legislature to draft its own budget bills. A final budget must be passed by Sept. 31. Dennis Drazin, the chairman and CEO of Darby Development, the operators of Monmouth Park, held out hope that the final budget will include the subsidy.
“It’s a little premature for me to say anything,” Drazin said. “The last time around, this wasn’t in the budget address either or in the first budget. We worked very hard with the legislators and ultimately we received it. In my mind, this does not mean the subsidy is dead or it can’t be resurrected. It’s just that it is a process that is going to take some time.”
Prior to the subsidy, Monmouth had been having a difficult time keeping its purses competitive with those in neighboring states and had seen the racing product suffer. The $10-million infusion had a positive impact on racing as it allowed the track to raise purses. The same maiden special weight race that went for $36,000 in 2018 has had a purse of $45,000 this year. The additional money also helped revive the New Jersey Thoroughbred breeding industry, which had all but ground to a halt in the years prior to 2019.
The 2020 subsidy has already been paid out, so the earliest this could impact racing would be next year.
The subsidy has had a similar impact on the harness racing industry. The Meadowlands has enjoyed a revival since the subsidy went into effect and is no longer at a big disadvantage when trying to compete against racing in the slots states like Pennsylvania and New York. Meadowlands owner Jeff Gural said losing the subsidy would be a major blow.
“This could be devastating for our industry,” he said. “It would be just horrible to lose this. In harness racing, it has been a success, especially on the breeding side. All the numbers in New Jersey, the stallions, the mares bred, have gone way up. It accomplished what we said it would accomplish. This is a byproduct of COVID-19. We were not blind sided by this but we were still hoping they would include it in the budget. The good thing is we have until the end of September to get them to change their minds.”
Gural said the decision whether or not to reinstate the bonus would likely fall into the hands of the Legislature and called on those in the Thoroughbred and standardbred industries in the state to reach out to their elected officials.
“It’s not a done deal but it certainly is important that anyone living in New Jersey who has any contacts with the legislature do their part,” he said. “It’s really up to the legislature to restore the money. People have to reach out to them and make the argument that this has been worth the money. The state will lose more without the subsidy than with the subsidy because of all the jobs that will be lost. Tell them how important this subsidy is and how many jobs will be lost if it goes away. It would devastate the industry.”
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