Scratches
 

I can't think of another sport where you can officially enter and then withdraw because you would have to play against a good team or good player.
Racing needs to do something about this. The word gets out that Baffert has a nice firster running today and half the field is allowed to scratch. That's BS and maybe Hammer can explain it when he's on the show next week.
They aren't even allowed to do that in dog racing so allowing it in horse racing doesn't say much for the sport.

No one in the field is "allowed" to scratch. By the same token no one can be forced to run a horse they don't wish to.

At Santa Anita if a horse scratches out of the body of the race such as today. That horse is on the "list" and cannot enter in another race for 10 days.

Seems a bit short. Since horses hardly run more than once a month these days anyway, maybe it should be changed to 30.

Guess they all missed the word in the 6th. lolol

Very tough juggle. Could be a late scratch deterrent at a track the doesn't struggle to fill cards.

Would be suicide in California.

I agree, but Vic has a good point about filling the box. 20 days might be enough for a trainer to say he/she might as well run today as a lot would run in 3 weeks anyway so you don't lose much by running today.

This all of course assumes that the horse in questioned is being scratched because of a non-physical reason. There are plenty of times when a horse isnt quite right due to a minor fever, sore foot, slight bout of colic, etc that dont require much time off but wouldn't allow a horse to be even close to his/her best on that day. A 30 days scratch rule would lead to more of these types being run with the jockey under instructions to just "get them around there" as so often happens in off the turf races at places like Tampa where a scratch may mean you may not get back in for 3 months. I'm not sure a rule that would have a greater % of horses in a given field not really trying is a good thing.

Isn't that something a vet could decide?

If you scratch for a physical reason you generally need a vet to verify

Right, so why the question if it isn't physical. Ten days isn't a punishment. I understand there aren't many horses these days, but if you don't punish those that abuse this, it will never get better. Tracks would be way better off cutting racing days than running these anemic fields. Of course, horsemen will fight this tooth and nail because they like short fields no matter how bad they are long term.

I think that you have to look at this issue differently depending on the level of track and area of the country.

I dont believe that lower level tracks have issues with scratches.

At the higher levels on the East coast the punishment for horseman is to run in too many races where they are up against it. As long as owners use win percentage as the single most important factor in selecting a trainer you wont find a "punishment" long enough for some guys. Rather than cutting racing days which on its own won't work, the racing programs offered need to revert away from offering so many choices, especially for the lower level horses. What horseman have is too many choices. Do we really need 15000 nw3 short and long on the dirt and short and long on the turf? Are there really enough horses to support 4 divisions of each class level?

Plus punishing horsemen for making prudent and sometimes tough decisions concerning the physical condition of their horses will lead to more abuse of the horses themselves which isnt what we need to be doing. What about off the turf scratches? Every issue can't be solved with tougher legislation.

And virtually every scratch is for a physical ailment or surface change even if they arent. If you call the stewards and tell them the field is too tough you wont get out of a race.

There are some lower level tracks that have problems with scratches, especially those with the 40% guys. Lots of times horses are entered just to get the races to go with no intention of ever running.

I agree about the conditions, it is ridiculous. There really is no reason females shouldn't be racing against males at the lower levels. Just put a 50% premium on claiming the females...i.e. $10,000 claimer is $15,000 for females, etc. You can combine conditions and have NW1LT and NW1/6MO in the same races. You could combine NW2 and NW3 LT. The same bad horses just move up one level at a time and eventually face each other again. I won't even address the ridiculous NW4 LT condition. You could combine multi-time winners with NWLT horses with different claiming prices like I mention above. There are plenty of ways to cut a lot of these conditions. The problem now is if you do this, you'll have fuller fields but less races, there are only so many horses. That is why you might need to lose days, at least temporarily.

As for the physical thing, if a horse has a problem, the vet should be able to verify it, right? If they can't, they should run. How hard is that? Obviously, you know better than I do, and the vet should be lean to the side of the horse safety. I have no problem with allowing scratches for surface changes. Hell, if enough scratch, just cancel the race. I'm not sure why it is set in stone that a race has to be run. Racing really needs to step in the 20th century, then maybe we can work on the 21st. I know there are P3s and P4s and more, but damn, just make them an all. Tracks get killed on those races, why are they forced to run them?

The issue is that identifying a physical issue is rarely black and white. The state vets are already overrun with paperwork and the duties of their jobs as it is without having to attempt to verify illness or lameness. Not to mention that the really black and white cases arent the ones that wind up being scraped off of the track. It is the more subtle issues that are the issue. For example I had a filly that recently broke her maiden and after that got sick. Gave her about 10 easy days and she came back training great. Her race didnt go and we were in a holding pattern with her. Worked her the other day and she just didnt go as good as I would have liked to see. Not terrible, not lame, just not quite as good as before. Vet went over her and didn't find much, certainly no smoking guns. I passed on entering her a few days ago because I still wasnt happy with her and I am able to do that because she is owned by a great guy who gives me a lot of leeway. However had I not been suspicious or out of town or whatever, my assistant (or anyone really especially a trainer under pressure by their owners to run) may have felt she was good enough to enter (perhaps had she changed hands and they didnt know her as well) and she would have passed the vet check. AND if I had gotten cold feet tried to scratch her and there was a examination that the state vet did in order to verify lameness she most likely would have been found to be racing sound. Anyway we re-examined her yesteday and the vet said that perhaps we should xray her knees. Found the start of a hairline fracture that almost assuredly would have turned into a slab fracture had she run in a race. Of course we know that this is hardly the case in many scratches but does show the potential issues that may arise.

Obviously there are many physical reasons to scratch a horse. So in a ten race card there were 7 scratches all day and 4 were in that race alone.

So it really isnt a problem afterall?