Something Missing

Here are a few articles that were in Sunday's Washington Post:

• A quarter pager on an area high school track meet;
• Another quarter page article on a local high school basketball game;
• Snippets on World Cup skiing, English Premier League soccer, and a hockey all-star game played in Russia involving players in a European league;
• Summaries, including box scores, of four local men's college basketball games that drew crowds of less than 2800;
• Summaries of numerous women's college basketball games from all over the country;
• A long article about a Maryland player who evidently hates Maryland's fans and spent much of Saturday's game cussin' at them; and
• A big chunk of space devoted to predicting the tournament field for the men's college NCAA basketball tournament (!), which won't be decided for more than three months.

Here's what wasn't in Sunday's Post:

• One word about horse racing nationally or locally.  Not one word about, for example, Laurel's What a Summer Stakes, in which young filly Access Fee ran her record to four-for-four at Laurel and punched her ticket to next month's Grade II Barbara Fritchie.

There are many reactions one could have to this curious editorial decision.  But it's pretty hard -- no, make that impossible -- to argue that Washington area sports fans have more interest in the outcome of a Russian hockey game, English soccer, or Swiss skiing events than they do in good quality racing at Laurel.  Or, for that matter, what Post basketball writers predict the tourney field will be three months from now.

You can't help but surmise that the editorial meeting that resulted in the scrapping of race coverage went something like this:

Editor 1: I don't like horse racing.

Editor 2: Neither do I.  None of my friends likes it, either.

Editor 1: Neither do mine.  Why don't we get rid of it?

Editor 2: Done.

On the bright side, at least we won't want for information about the Bundesliga next season.