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Originally Posted by jms62
Racing is truly a funny business. IT is the only business that attacks its customers when they complain about the product and then wonders why they are losing customers. Still love the show.
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Who's being attacked? Why is any response that answers a critique over-dramatically interpreted as an 'attack'? I provided my response and it was written without rancor.
Frankly, I don't get the complaint about 'the product'. The 'product' has been great, really, all year. Are fields stretched thin these weeks with Oak Tree, Belmont, Turfway and then Keeneland stacked up on top of each other? Yeah. Read Crist's piece about this from last weekend.
There aren't enough top horses to fill every stake.. And people have selective memories if they think every stake historically had overflow fields 10, 20, 40 and 75 years ago.
They didn't. As a snapshot, Kelso was in fields of 8, 7, 6, 4 and 6 when he won his 5 straight Gold Cups in the 60's.
There are too many stakes that are similarly conditioned that are run near each other that siphon the horses, and the landscape has changed so that a place like Presque Isle Downs is a legitimate venue to run your horse if you're considering a Breeders' Cup try this year.
Why does the $750k Cotillion have to be run this week? Why shouldn't those 3yo fillies be facing off against elders already in a race like the Beldame the way Quality Road and Summer Bird are facing elders in the JCGC? (How about running the Cotillion on the Pennsylvania Derby card? It gets a little close to the Alabama, but you get the idea..)
What's really more accurate about the business of racing, is that it's a game where the customers are rarely if ever satisfied, and are constantly searching for things about which to complain. Revel in the next of a series of weekends of generally outstanding racing, instead of focusing on less than ideal circumstances of things that are hard to control in the environment as it currently exists.
The Beldame, at the last second, surprisingly lost a 6th horse that made it a very good race. As for the Vosburgh, it's a great race with the 5 it got. Generally, small stake fields are indicators of horses present that are standouts... Like Fabulous Strike, Go Go Shoot and Munnings. Get a copy of Champions and look at the field sizes of some of the famous historic races over the years. It will be an eye-opener.