The Excellent, Lousy and Unpleasant of 2020 in California

Most, I’m certain, will have witnessed the tv advertisement for an on the web dating web site that is as on-the-nose as a well-positioned still left hook.

In it, Satan falls in appreciate with the yr 2020, played by a hellraiser masquerading as the girl-up coming-doorway. As flaming asteroids pelt the earth, Satan and 2020 look at on while lamenting the imminent transform of the calendar. “I just don’t want this year to conclusion,” says Satan, wistfully.

Wistful nostalgia is barely a little something quite a few will be emotion when they finally search back again over this annus horribilis–yet someway, it has not been all tears and recriminations. Here’s a year-finish critique of the good, poor and unsightly of the final 12-months in the California horse racing marketplace, with a handful of pointed inquiries that will roll in excess of into the New Year…

The Undesirable: Pandemic in numbers

When the outdated racing activity has tested shockingly resilient to the schedule–shredding machinations of a world pandemic–especially compared to other sporting activities whose calendars were taken to with a chainsaw–the Golden State has hardly walked absent unscathed.

Earlier in the 12 months, stay racing was suspended at Santa Anita Santa for just about two months. Del Mar management experienced to nix a weekend of racing around the begin of their summer meet up with soon after 15 jockeys analyzed good.

Golden Gate Fields, with additional than 300 favourable scenarios, is at present sitting down idle, handbrake on, though they await the greenlight from area authorities. And when will that be?

The information out of the monitor carries on to be open up-ended. Dave Duggan, the facility’s normal supervisor, discussed via textual content how they continue to function with the neighborhood well being division. At the exact same time, he remained mum on items like a tentative opening day and the existing circumstance regarding good checks.

Both equally in the around and very long term, nonetheless, a additional consequential fallout is the financial impact on the industry’s day by day operations from an unparalleled betting shift in direction of ADW platforms–a trend that might prove challenging-baked into the bettor’s psyche, even when the pandemic lifts.

This should make for stark looking through for any individual who would make their dwelling from horseracing in the point out. Why?

The way the field operates in California, quite a few essential programs receive a excellent bulk of their funding via bets produced at brick and mortar services, and decimated revenues in this sphere are likely to have a profound effect on the bottom line of these plans, some of which ended up anemic as it was.

In an October Q&A with the TDN, Thoroughbred Owners of California (TOC) CEO and president Greg Avioli dug down into the intricate economic weeds of this difficulty.

Just glimpse at the state’s stabling and vanning fund. In that Q&A, Avioli spelled out how that program–primarily funded from wagering at the OTBs and satellites–is running with a $3.7-million deficit this yr. Other consequences are much less evident but just as astringent.

Revenues, for example, from uncashed or unclaimed refunds, tickets and vouchers are employed to fund these things as wellness and welfare benefits to jockeys and to systems benefitting the backstretch neighborhood. When those people funds aren’t confined to bets made at brick and mortar venues, ADW wagers never go uncashed. And we’re chatting significant amounts misplaced as a outcome.

During the fiscal year 2018-2019, money from unclaimed tickets used to reward the backstretch neighborhood totalled $836,090, according to the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB).

Then will come the challenge of purses–an vital for trainers who don’t make a residing from their day-rates.

As I reported a number of months again, against a equivalent eight-thirty day period period in 2018, the number of races this yr experienced declined 30%, and though the in general deal with fell only 18.8%, purses dropped far more than 26%.

In other phrases, a boon for the ADW market hasn’t necessarily translated into a windfall for the California horsemen. Which begs the question: How substantially of Santa Anita’s recent document opening day manage funneled back again into purses?

The deadline for the most recent spherical of ADW agreement renegotiations is the close of the calendar year, when the hub agreements expire.

I have asked the TOC for a primer when the information have been inked. The TOC has also promised a entire yearly breakdown of deal with and purses–much like the corporation did for the initial eight months of 2020, but this time thirty day period-by-month–when the new year rolls all-around. Observe this house.

The Excellent: Equine basic safety

This is an effortless equation: California’s bettering equine protection record, with Del Mar at the time once again heading the most secure racetracks in the country. In their circumstance, this marks 4 several years of tricky function and proven results–an achievement that just cannot get observed ample.

I’ve published about this subject rather thoroughly, attempting to parse the whys and wherefores–no effortless endeavor by virtue of the multifaceted mother nature of any equine injury. One typical thread has been this, nevertheless: Catching brewing troubles early more than enough.

In this regard, Santa Anita’s new diagnostic tools–the MRI and PET scan systems–are a central piece of the puzzle. Since their inception at the track, researchers have unearthed a veritable treasure trove of new information and facts to assistance demonstrate the epidemiology of fetlock fractures.

But a broader panoramic check out is of an evolving society shift across California’s backstretches, with the “one-extra-run” mentality becoming eschewed in favor of a a lot more holistic “one-additional-thirty day period-off” method.

Several will say that this ought to constantly have been the norm–they’re correct.

Nonetheless, California’s trainers, house owners, veterinarians, grooms, hotwalkers, training riders and jockeys should really be applauded for sticking with it and carrying out the grunt operate of steering this unwieldy boat to calmer waters–especially when the entice of even larger purses at more permissive states has made jumping ship an altogether tempting proposition.

The Unsightly: Arbitrary determination producing

At the latest regular monthly CHRB meeting, a level of rivalry proved to be the board’s conclusion to grant Los Alamitos a six-thirty day period license as opposed to the normal 12 months.

As my colleague at the TDN, Bill Finley, subsequently set it, “The CHRB was currently being unreasonable when it voted to only give Los Alamitos a 6-month license to run in 2021,” arguing that Los Alamitos “deserved better” than the way the make a difference was managed.

But what this speaks to is a much much larger, a lot more urgent and ongoing challenge: When it will come to equine protection, by what specific set of benchmarks and metrics are California’s license holders becoming held to so that conclusions with professional implications are produced with aim rigor fairly than a subjective taste or political bent?

As Mark Twain when reported, “Facts are stubborn things, but data are pliable.”

On the surface, it seems to be like Los Alamitos has experienced a bad year–28 racing or education fatalities, the extensive bulk of which are Quarter Horses. This appears to be primarily troubling when held up to the scaled-down fatality figures at Del Mar and Santa Anita this calendar year. But the satan, they say, is in the facts.

For just one, Los Alamitos is open up to 12 months-spherical schooling and racing. At Santa Anita, there have been 16 racing and training fatalities so significantly this calendar year, but with training suspended all through the summer months and a racing calendar in 2020 significantly smaller than Los Alamitos. How does the basis of comparison seem when you aspect in the amount of horses at a facility, quantity of racing commences, quantity of routines and the kind?

And then, did the board members also acquire into account how in contrast to Santa Anita, Golden Gate and Del Mar, Los Alamitos is only just instituting a fetlock arthrodesis program, which assures that some horses who experience extreme fetlock injuries–those typically requiring euthanasia–undergo a complicated operation to the ankle?

For context, 8 reported Thoroughbreds have undergone fetlock arthrodesis surgical procedure over the past year or so in California. If Los Alamitos had followed go well with faster, would that have skewed any of the figures activity in their favor?

I asked the CHRB for clarification on the basis by which the board produced its selection. This is the response I obtained: “No statistical analysis was done.”

Let us then stage back again and appear at the ongoing lawful fight concerning Jerry Hollendorfer and The Stronach Group (TSG), which revolves around TSG’s assertion the Hall of Fame trainer’s horses were disproportionately at hazard throughout the track’s benighted winter season-spring meet a couple many years ago.

For their aspect, Hollendorfer’s authorized team have launched a selection of counter-figures showing the trainer’s broad basic safety document as statistically normal. But let us wear our analytical hats a moment for a longer period.

A single coach has saddled 3 of the seven racing fatalities that have happened at each Santa Anita and Del Mar this yr, producing this license holder liable for just about 43% of catastrophic racing breakdowns concerning Southern California’s two greatest profile racing venues.

I’m not elevating this statistic as a disciplinary connect with to arms–rather to bring focus to the necessity of context when seeking at these multifaceted concerns in isolation.

When digging down into this particular case, for illustration, all kinds of elements would have to be weighed for it to be analyzed rather, together with the range of starts about a prolonged time period of time, amount of horses in education, the trainer’s regulatory heritage. You’d also have to inquire difficult thoughts about the rigor of the regulatory scrutiny with which this trainer’s horses are offered prior to managing. Blame is nothing if not an egalitarian beast.

TSG’s actions against Hollendorfer, of training course, took location prior to the adoption of a rule which involves the CHRB to carry out a complete assessment of every fatality at a CHRB facility, together with a evaluate of the medication documents.

But at the finish of the day, if issues of professional import are currently being decided on some variety of proportionality, what specifically are the procedures of the sport?

Obviously, the state’s regulators and monitor officers require to do a much far better position of explicating the strains in the sand, if indeed traces have been drawn. And if some of the more recent horse racing board members aren’t savvy to the nuances underpinning the issues they’re needed to vote on, they will need to suggestion their hat to that publicly.

When livelihoods are on the lines–especially in the midst of a world wide pandemic, the harsh economic ramifications of which have nonetheless to thoroughly enjoy out–it’s the the very least that can be requested.