Thanks

Real Writing on Racing 💯

There are many themes associated with Thanksgiving, giving thanks for your blessings would be obvious but for me the one that always resonated the most was tradition. Of course there is the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, roasted turkey with all the fixings, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, mac and cheese, cranberry sauce or other twists depending on your regional or cultural heritage. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade live from New York City has been a fixture since the 1930’s. For some reason the Detroit Lions get their annual national television spotlight as the NFL’s kickoff game with the Dallas Cowboys always following them as the host of the second game. Tradition would be Thanksgiving’s trademark if holidays had such a thing.

For us racing people Thanksgiving has usually been a day of work prior to those other traditions. As long as I can remember Aqueduct conducted a card with a late morning start, I believe first post being as early as 10:30 am. The early start was unique and allowed everyone, the fans, the frontside workers, the backside workers plus trainers and jockeys to get business conducted and still make it home in time to see the Lions lose and have the feeding frenzy begin. I will never forget the year that my dad and I made the trek to the harness track in Saratoga to wager on the holiday card from the Big A (I believe they only took NYRA tracks at the time) and walked out flush, scoring big on a 30-1 longshot in a New York bred maiden race that was like Christmas come early. There was always something special seeing all the other racing enthusiasts handicapping and firing away at 11am on a major family holiday, reminding me that racing provides us all with another family that we often take for granted too. I don’t know why Aqueduct isn’t racing on Thanksgiving anymore and it’s not an earth-shattering development but it does seem like another tradition lost in a sport where despite often seeming stuck in the past, we too easily forget it. Enjoy the day and good luck if you are racing or playing!

What do we in racing have to be thankful for?

🦃 I’m thankful for horses. They are truly amazing animals. Even the slow ones.

🦃 I’m thankful for all the crazy people. If it wasn’t for crazy people, racing wouldn’t exist. You have to be crazy to jump on the back of a thousand pound animal, with no brakes and limited steering and urge them to go close to 40 mph. You have to be crazy to get up and go train horses 7 days a week/365 days a year knowing that the vast majority aren’t very good and the financials are so tight that if you are lucky, you won’t lose money everyday. You have to be crazy to climb up into a tight little cage inside of a steel starting gate with amped up super athletes that are ready to go from a standing position to close to 40 mph in three seconds and hold on to them tight. You have to be crazy to operate a racetrack in the face of intense competition for the gambling dollar, opportunistic politicians circling like vultures trying to divert your funds and animal rights radicals pecking away despite having zero plan to care for those very animals they claim to care about. I’m thankful for all the crazy people that decided that investing money into buying horses was a good idea despite knowing that only about 10% of them break even or make money and that just getting to the races, let alone win one, is an accomplishment. And finally never forget to be thankful for the really crazy people that are wagering their hard earned money on our races despite high takeout rates, shrinking field size, dubious regulation, wildly inconsistent stewards rulings and maddening late odds drops. Thank you to every single one of you! (even the ones that annoy me!!)

🦃 I’m thankful for turf racing.

🦃 I’m thankful for dirt racing.

🦃 I’m not that thankful for synthetic surface racing. Well maybe a tiny bit 💁🏼‍♂️

🦃 I’m thankful for simulcasting and ADW’s despite the industry’s amazing lack of foresight in developing these, imagine if we were still stuck with one card of races at your local track? These days we take for granted that we can walk down the road at 5 am, betting and watching races from the other side of the world on our cell phones. Yes I have done that by the way. Shout out to the HKJC!

🦃 I’m thankful that we have people still interested in and actively preserving the history of our sport. You know who you are 👏🏼

🦃 I’m thankful for all the maniacs on racing Twitter that despite the occasional bouts of complete dysfunction provide an amazing amount of daily lessons that the racing suits could learn from. For free.

🦃 I’m thankful for all the people who have listened to Going in Circles, even if it was only one time, even if you disagree with everything that we say. I had zero expectations that anyone would ever listen when I started the show but thank you to Jason Beides for pushing me to do it and thank you to Barry Spears for being a great co-host. If I never do another episode, those two will be my guys for life

🦃 Finally I’m thankful for the all the friends that I have met during my life in racing. Because of Horse racing I have become friends with both billionaires and people that have clawed their way out of abject poverty and so many others in-between. I now have friends all around the world from Australia to Hong Kong to the UK to South America not to mention in virtually every racing jurisdiction in North America. I’ve been fortunate enough to have purchased horses at Newmarket, raced in Hong Kong, attended the races at several tracks in Chile. I have been lucky enough to have trained for some great people and had success for so many of them winning stakes at Saratoga and Keeneland and Churchill Downs and Kentucky Downs and others. Among my very best and now lifelong friends are those who worked for me along the way and virtually every close friend I have met since I hit legal drinking age has been in some way associated with horse racing. Thank you all!