Breeder's Cup Rep on ATR
 

Pete Rotondo championed rhe reason for the Breeder's Cup being at Santa Anita was the safety of the horse. This is just a convenient excuse. The reason is MAKETING, MARKETING, and more MARKETING.

Maybe they just wanted 'to spread out' after the 'straight jacket' like confinement of Monmouth Park.

Personally I'd like to see it at CD every year but that's a 6hr drive instead of a 3 and 1/2 hr plane ride. They sure can handle the crowd with ease though.

Loved how he played the tradition card when asked about changing the saddle cloths from purple to the standard color designations.

If they can sell rights to sponsor's for each saddle cloth , they would use individual ones. For example #1, Mc Donald's, # 2 Budweiser, etc.

I'm no fan of the BC, and I am pleased to see them marginalizing themselves, but Peter Rotundo works for them and it's his job to give the company line. Horse racing is better for having Peter working in the game.

I'm sure he's a nice guy and all. It just seems that the Breeder's Cup has these purple cloths up on a pedastal, when the vast majority of the horseracing fans don't like them. Let me rephrase:

Loved how the Breeder's Cup sent out a guy to play the tradition card when asked about changing the saddle cloths from purple to the standard color designations.

It's not a question of him being a " nice guy ".....he's a smart and knowledgable person who loves the game.

It was rather absurd for him to cite synthetic track stats when the yet-to-be completed Santa Anita surface has no history whatsoever. One can only hope it will be safe and I don't blame Jess Jackson or any other owner that chooses not to race a horse over it.

After hearing the interview I'm curious to find out what makes Randy Moss and "Expert" on horse safety?

I was also thinking that the statsitic he threw out "that there was a 42% reduction in fatalities in California as a result of the installation of the Synthetic surfaces" is probably GREATLY Skewed by the fact that the year before they installed Synthetics Del Mar had an unusually high number of breakdowns. It would be interesting to see what the statistics were if that year was excluded. Clearly there were issues with both the track and the sub-surface (Base) of the track that needed to be addressed regardless of the installation of a synthetic surface.

Anybody else have any thoughts?

Yeah, no one knows off a record high number of fatalities what would have happened had they replaced the surface with a state of the art dirt surface. Could have been 42% as well, could have been 20%, could have been 60%.

I'm not disputing that and I don't want to leave the impression that I'm attacking him because I'm not. I just didn't like the answer.

I would like to see a report on soft tissue injuries.

Maybe smart and knowledgeable but he is assuming everyone else is an idiot if he expects us to believe the BC is in CA for the safety of the horse. Maybe he would want to actually have a track in place 2 months before the race before making such a stupid comment.

If they really thought a synthetic track was necessary because of the safety issue they would be staging this year's BC at Arlington. Arlington at least has a 2 year experience as a polytrack plus previous experience as a BC host. MARKETING is thir sole purpose of staging this event at Santa Anita.

Yes. Nothing beats an early winter day at Arlington.

Is marketing the sport of horse racing a bad thing?

It is when it drives every move the sport makes as opposed to the original intent of the BC which was to provide the sport with one day of championship races.

and is running it at another track somehow not marketing the product?

i'm not sure what point the op is trying to make. maybe there's a distiction between marketing and "MARKETING".

or to put it another way, to market the sport to a wider audience.

WRONG! As I will keep telling you. I remember the discussions at the time and it was all about getting together a big enough purse to keep elite level colts in training to the end of their 3yo season and/or for an additional season.

Originally there was to be only the Classic race, but since most breeders wouldn't waste money nominating their fillies and their foals bred to be turf horses, sprinters or hot 2yos (and sires who sired that sort), they expanded to a day long program. Then it was pointed out that most breeders of less than premium sales-bred type foals (the vast majority of those bred) wouldn't nominate, since it would be a long-shot than any of their foals would ever run in these races. So the committee developed the Breeders Cup supplements for established midlevel stakes races, to which those horses might reasonably aspire. All the recent new races (Filly and Mare turf, turf for 2yos, etc.) are yet more inducements for breeders to nominate more foals and more stallions in order to keep the purse structure from collapsing.