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#28
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Everyone seems to long for the "good old days," but 20 years ago, a track like Churchill Downs had really poor racing with allowance races going for half the purse that a race in NY went for. It was not until purses were significantly increased in the mid-1990s that Churchill and Keeneland really took off and started to have an impact upon NYRA's horse population. Delaware and Philadelphia didn't have comparable purses, and places like Mountaineer and Charles Town ran nothing but $2500 claimers. The other aspect that has not been discussed here is the impact that another recent phenomonem, the mega-stables, are having upon the game. It's tough to get an allowance race to go with a large field when the horses eligible for the condition reside in only a handful of stables. Maybe the uncoupled entry rule will help, but I doubt it. I know it's a pipe dream nowadays, but racing would be far better off if no trainer had more than 40 horses. (As an aside, think about how remarkable Woody Stephens' Belmont record is given the size of his barn in the 1980s versus what Pletcher gets today.) The Pletchers of the world rarely turn down a horse, and if a horse can't excel at Belmont, they ship it to tracks like Delaware and Arlington so they can keep their win percentage up and not have to tell the owner that the horse is not MSW-worthy. Last edited by parsixfarms : 05-27-2010 at 09:40 AM. |