Originally Posted by Kasept
Non-partisan? I'm all for trying to prune racing schedules to enhance the product. Being supportive of NY doesn't preclude being negative about anything or anywhere else. Go find someone in the industry media more supportive of things than me. I simply find it bizarre that the NY cards are held under some special scrutiny. Where were these examinations of Monmouth's cards when they sucked year after year? Where are they regarding Kentucky, California and Illinois?
It's an intense sequence of racing in NY this Saturday through next Saturday. Every single card cannot be filled with ALW's and Stakes. Racing secretaries build their slates in as balanced a manner as they can when they are anticipating the kind of days coming up like Memorial Day and Belmont Day. They use the stock on the grounds. If there are tons of maidens on the grounds, state bred or otherwise, you run maiden races. There is also seasonality involved in the flow of the condition books. You run maiden races in the spring at Belmont so you can run ALW's in the summer at Saratoga. Ain't no ALW's if you don't have horses that haven't won...
And some thoughts on my 'partisanship'. I make no apologies for being especially supportive when it comes to New York racing. For one thing, this summer will be my 10th year working on the grounds of Saratoga. While not a NYRA employee, I was there through the arduous period of the pre-renewal of the franchise, and know the specifics of the franchise debate as well or better than anyone. And I know how hard most people at NYRA work to put on the best show possible. And most take the same pride I do in being part of the show (even in the tiny way my foodservice facility is part of the show).
I also know how the Pataki administration worked to prevent the Aqueduct VLT parlor from being built in an attempt to financially hamstring the Association so the "Friends of NY Racing"/Empire group could foist the franchise into their hands. That perverted attempt to gain the franchise and the racino for their own greedy purposes has placed NY racing and breeding in the position it's in right now. And the fact that the New York media was too lazy to investigate those specifics or willfully ignored them, is a disgrace.
Every schithole harness track in the state has their VLT parlor installed, and the most important facility that was approved a decade ago STILL SITS WAITING TO BE BUILT... Yet the editorial boards of the embarrassing newspapers here and downstate have failed to examine or decry why $1,000,000 a day in revenue has been missed for the past 2,920 or so days (Yeah.. roughly $3,000,000,00). As a taxpayer in NY, I wonder how there isn't an absolute uproar from the citizenry as to the whys and wherefores of this missed revenue opportunity.
New York racing and breeding should be at the apex of its' success and strength, and instead is being forced to nearly start over. I'm tired of the over the top smears and attacks on a group of people currently at NYRA that have nothing to do with Kenny Noe, Terry Meyocks, Barry Schwartz or anything that happened on the watch of other Association administrations. And I'm completely fed up with the inane, brainless spew I see daily elsewhere on the internet regarding NYRA, the VLT parlor, the state and the OTB situation. So if I'm 'partisan', I feel quite justified in being so.
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