[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by cmorioles

I don't care that you spoke about my business, I really don't. It is doing just fine and you suggesting it needs help is silly. For all I know you are doing just fine too, I hope you are.

Now, back to the topic. Of course it is shifting away from the tracks, so stop paying ridiculous amounts of money to run plants that are too big and/or unnecessary. Stop trying to get people to bet on **** races and then complaining you need slots to survive. As Fred says, way too many tracks, way too many races, not enough horses. As evidenced by the racing at places like EvD and Mnr and FL, there is a line where people are simply not going to bet much on bad horses.

I agreed with you it is mostly the tracks (your partner) selling their soul to the devil. Slots do hurt handle. First, there are people that bet horses that move to slots, not the other way around. Second, keeping these tracks open creates a worse product at other tracks. I can't believe you can't see that. Look at the quality of racing in New York compared to 10 years ago. There is pretty much no hard knocking claimers left, the former bread and butter of racing. They are spread among Philly, Delaware, Monmouth, etc.

If you don't see my point, that is fine, I'm sure I'm missing some of yours. I'm sure short term slots are great, but long term, I'm sure they are not. Rather than beg for welfare, racing should be fixing the product. If they don't, states will realize they didn't need racing in the first place to suck away people's money via slots.

While you make many valid points, the bigger issue in the deterioration of the quality of day to day cards especially in NY is the rise of statebred races. As a horseman without megamoney owners, there would be very little reason not to focus on statebreds if I were to relocate to NY. It is like having two separate circuits at the same track. NY has also harmed its racing program by allowing a handful of trainers to operate huge stables on NYRA grounds via Saratoga being open for training 7 months of the year. It allows these guys to hoard horses and never forces them to make a choice. They just keep expanding which further drives the other, less fortunate horseman more towards statebreds which can run for the same money in most cases except for only the very best horses. While there surely is a better caliber horse found at Delaware and Monmouth when compared to days gone by, the effect of statebred races in NY has imo been more of a detriment than slots especially when you consider that a large amount of the quality horses running at those places are trained by big trainers who have similar horses already running in NY.