"In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell."Jess Jackson throws down the proverbial gauntlet and then Iavarone soils himself trying to pick it up. Not that anything that comes out of this imbeciles mouth is surprising anymore but I know people like this, less interested in promoting what little they have or do.
-H. L. Mencken
Charitable giving is wonderful and there is far too little of it, present company included, but it is sickening and demeaning to everyone involved when those that do take it upon themselves to be munificent, feel the need to broadcast it as well.
Moving on.
QQ at Turf Luck exposes the indifference with which race track execs treat racing fans.
The Breeder's Cup announced its new drug policy and that will go a long way to move the industry in the direction that it needs to go. The racing jurisdictions are falling over themselves trying to implement all the recommendations handed down by the Jockey Club. (The Jockey Club apparently just discovered these issues and with the alacrity normally reserved for Congressional committees, set about to righting this wrong)
Halsey Minor is trying his damndest to beg the powers that be to help him help them. Getting Hialeah back to being a track for horse racing, a novel concept, is what we need. Colin's Ghost has a great piece on this issue.
Alex Waldrop is still carefully going over the arrangement of the deck chairs and the jockey's guild is in serious negotiations with the valets.
Much has been and will be said about the motivation behind these carefully studied initiatives. A while back I wrote a piece about how Big Brown might be the catalyst to set the industry right but I was dead wrong. This confluence of action is not serendipity nor is it a synergistic exercise in management 101. It is the spastic and dysfunctional reaction of myriad entities, desperate to retain their small hold on a diminishing pie. No one will promote this to the press but the only reason we are here, at this juncture, this sorry and tragically comic call to action is because of one heartwrenching moment.
The all too public breakdown of the gallant Eight Belles.
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1 comment:
Wow, that Mencken quote is dead-on.
As far as Eight Belles spurring public outcry, spurring the industry call-to-arms, I led off with that in something I wrote in June.
http://therail.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/thoroughbreds-and-the-law/
There was a lot of sensationalism involved; that's what spurred the Congressional hearing, for instance, rather than genuine concern (in my Mencken-like view). Once the public forgets what Eight Belles looked like stricken on the track ... this all could fade into the background.
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