Make Earnings Matter - By Matthew Gatsas

re: Make Earnings Matter - By Matthew Gatsas

Pedigree Ann — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:46:00 GMT

TC makes a lot of good points. Earnings are a bad test, with casino-generated purses skewing the list. Using graded race results is difficult, too, because it fails to account for horses who were good at 2 but have not progressed versus the horses who have 'come to hand' at 3.

In Britain, all horses with more than 3 starts have an official rating, created by the official handicapper. In races that are 'oversubscribed', those with the lowest ratings are eliminated from the field. But they have only a fraction of the horses in training that we do so it would inevitable that too many errors would occur for that system to work here.

The problem with the Derby is that far too many horses who have proved they want no part of 9f or more are entered because they 'have the earnings.' It used to be that trainers and owners were realistic about their horses; not anymore.

re: Make Earnings Matter - By Matthew Gatsas

nedjohnsonsux — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:57:28 GMT

The beauty of the triple crown is how very hard it is to win. After Secretariat, Slew and Affirmed the outcry was to make the series tougher. Now so many years later we need to make it easier? Have you stopped to think how many horses have come close? I would counter that had Lucien Laurin, Laz Barrera or Billy Turner had trained Baffert's horses we would have triple crown winners. Leave the races in tact.

re: Make Earnings Matter - By Matthew Gatsas

TC — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:29:50 GMT

I think this falls into the category of changing the difficulty of the Triple Crown. Why not put more spacing in between the races, limit the Kentucky Derby to 14 horses and make it the Belmont Invitational? Because the horse you mentioned and 10 others had no such luxuries provided for them.

This is like saying Secretariat wouldn't have won the Triple Crown had he been unlucky at the draw, or that Lookin' At Lucky would have had he really been lucky. You don't have to go back that far to realize the best horse can win the Derby given a bad post assignment. That is one of the reasons it is so hard and more importantly why it is so coveted. These hurdles really draw the fans attention, way more than these supposed stars, most of which barely gain any notoriety before the actual Triple Crown. I don't see many prep races gaining much mainstream attention but the Triple Crown still draws a crowd.

I also think earnings is a flawed way of doing it. Other sports rely on competitors having to go up against each other throughout the season, without choice. While horse racing has so many different paths to the Kentucky Derby most horses will meet there for the first time. Hypothetically, the winner of the Delta Jackpot and Sunland Derby would be given preference over the BC Juvenile and Wood Memorial hero. That doesn't seem very fair to me. A much more complicated system would be the only way to do this right and even so the points I raised still stand.

This wouldn't be fair to the legends of racing or the legacies of future horses winning an easier Triple Crown that was spoon-fed to them. Lookin' At Lucky need not be compared to Secretariat or even Big Brown, he simply wasn't good enough to get the job done that day. The sport isn't lesser for it.

Maybe making more clear paths to the Derby would promote interest in the preps, and still funnel the best horses to our biggest races. Then of course it's the luck of the draw, but hey this is horse racing.