Where Are We Going?

re: Where Are We Going?

BlueHen — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:37:20 GMT

Becky, I don't have anything useful to say, but what YOU say resonates with me. I'm a lifelong racing fan and plan to "stick around," but there are definitely real problems. The drugs and the horse-neglect make me sick, and personally, the whole slot machine thing turns me off. There's a racetrack about 2 hours west of me that only pictures slot machines on a nearby billboard. It's like the horses don't even count. And then the Saratoga Raceway (a Standardbred track) re-named itself Saratoga Gaming and Raceway. The horses should come 1st. They're the ones that gave us the business in the 1st place. No horse, no racing. Duh.

re: Where Are We Going?

aspradling — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:55:36 GMT

Educating people on change in a industry that has wounded itself is a tough task. Every little bit counts and so the glass is still half full, we just need someone to stop by the lemonade stand to look at it. Tease the thirst. Which you do well.

re: Where Are We Going?

needler in Virginia — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:34:03 GMT

Becky, there's only one bright spot out there (as far as as I can tell) and that's Larry and Cindy Jones. Classy and dignified through all that crap... how on Earth did he manage THAT? He is the kind of person I would want training MY horses were they not Morgans (not known for speed in the stretch!!), Mr Jones suffered PETA's slings and arrows and came out the other side with more truth in his little finger than those fruitbats who wrote foul things, held up those grotesque signs, and called the Jones's in the middle of the night to make nasty accusations. In the end, PETA looks like a group of loonies because their "spokespersons" were speaking of things they neither understood nor knew to be true. When confronted with truth they chose to look away and believe the lies. ALL THAT SAID, Mr Jones has a very good chance to win the Derby this year, and walk away with head held high......but DAMN I hate to see him go.........

My good thoughts and best wishes are with the whole Jones stable: I'm hoping for a huge win from Friesian Fire or Old Fashioned, but as a fan of Win Willy, maybe they could arrange a triple dead heat this year??????????

re: Where Are We Going?

For Big Red — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:04:37 GMT

TO BECKY: I have enormous sympathy for everything you wrote here. I seem to have been born loving horses. Loved them as far back as my earliest memories can take me. When I was a very, very young child, I used to fantasize about having a racing stable. Even planned what my silks would look like, and sketched barn designs. I would be an owner who would see my horses every day. I'd ride them and plan their racing careers.

Of course, time, maturity and a realization I'd never be wealthy enough to own racehorses knocked the childhood fantasies right out of me. Yet I loved the sport and followed it very closely until the breakdowns to favorite horses started piling up. For a brief time in my late teens, I worked on a breeding farm exercising and rubbing yearlings and 2-yr-olds.

My own breaking point came in 1988 when Risen Star was injured and retired after the Belmont. By then I knew what could happen to stallions if they didn't do well at stud, and because Secretariat was not a sire of sires, I feared for Star's future. Fortunately, even though he died young, he remained at Walmac.

For awhile I channeled my energies into a racehorse rescue group in Southern California, until the in-fighting got out of hand, similarly to what you described here.

So I drifted away from the sport for years. I'm back in a limited way thanks to these Blood-Horse blogs, but am really afraid to care too much ever again.

I've often thought that, at bottom, racing's most serious problem is the many senseless ways it alienates people like me -- people who would be its most loyal devotees if...well, I don't have complete the sentence after "if." You know what I mean.

re: Where Are We Going?

merrywriter — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:09:14 GMT

It's so hurtful to see magnificent animals be they horses or even elephants abused. The only consolation is that there are people who have the guts to find a way to give sanctuary to them such as Habitat for Horses (or The Elephant Sanctuary, if you can imagine that feed bill).

With the human population so removed from anything natural, and raised on computer games and the adulation of cars, horse racing is a dying breed, I just don't see any way around it. In the mean time, as I am in my sixties, I will enjoy the sport while it is here.

re: Where Are We Going?

John T — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:06:05 GMT

Hang in there Becky''Just as Tom Sawyer could not forget another Becky,Becky Thatcher the world will never forget the thoroughbred they are just too much of an magnificent specimen.