Whipping up a frenzy

Real Writing on Racing 💯

The field of seven rather ordinary fillies slowly trudged up the backstretch towards the familiar green and white starting gate located just inside the little six furlong chute where it seems like a million races have started. As this unremarkable group neared the post late Friday afternoon in Oceanport, New Jersey, a little beach town down by the shore with a racetrack that was opening its doors for the 76th time, there was little that felt normal about Monmouth Park on this day.

Yes fans were allowed as they were last summer which made venerable Jersey track a rarity in the pandemic world. The 1500 person limit was gone however and even the winners circle which was infamously off-limits was now not socially distanced. No the old school grandstand and the sprawling owners box area and the shady paddock and the unique Parterre boxes weren’t the story, though the forbidden BYOB policy in the picnic area, which was held over from the COVID era, has caused consternation among locals.

The past few days the riding crop or whip rule, that was sneakily enacted last summer by a New Jersey Racing Commission operating at 44% capacity with five of the nine seats vacant, has bumped the castigation of Robert Baffert from the front page of the horse racing news headlines. It isn’t as though this topic of whips hasn’t reared its head before, California racing has been kicking their rule around for about a year and a half without managing to satisfy backers or detractors. This New Jersey rule was a step beyond though as it allowed zero strikes or even the ability to wave the whip and was passed without any meaningful input from industry groups including those who are going to have to ply their trade under them, jockeys. In effect the obtuse commission deemed usage of a riding crop in the Garden State illegal except in unspecified “safety” situations with draconian penalties set to take effect without even having a period of adjustment for the drastic change. It is a prime example of how not to effectively regulate an industry, especially considering the lack of commissioners with any understanding or experience in the sport, the lack of bodies in the five other seats notwithstanding. What’s been left unsaid by most industry coverage is the reasoning that this group of torpid regulators would think to enact such a radical rule, then defend it with HISA and it’s federal mandates which will supersede state rules right around the corner? Remember the NJRC sat around doing nothing last summer when purses were held up for months because of the incompetent testing laboratory they hired. What should be chilling for those who support thoroughbred racing is that clearly these rules were not only heavily influenced by animal rights groups, it’s entire plausible that they wrote them.

Where racing industry members deserve blame and lots of it is the lack of professionalism shown this past week. Dennis Drazen and company took the absolutely lowest road possible by suggesting the NJRC buffoons could take regulatory action against jockeys for not riding or advising others not to ride opening day or any other day throughout the 53 day meet. Ignoring public sentiment that was about 99% in continued support of the jockeys in question, the very next day he said that he was considering a class action suit against jockeys/Jockeys Guild or a meet long ban for those riders that boycotted opening day. However misguided these ideas seem to be, they should not have been raised in public forums; dragging the entire industry down because of a dispute between two industry groups over rules made by a non-industry group is the most 2021 horseracing thing possible. If the horseracing industry in North America had feet, they would have long ago been shot off.

On the social media front there was the usual back and forth including inane comments from people who seem to believe their opinions are just step below God’s decrees to Moses on Mount Sinai. Here are the official Going in Circles commandments concerning whips and racehorses:

1. Thou’s opinion formed without any cognizant, realistic reasoning is meaningless (applies to all subjects)

2. Thou shall not tell current riders how they should feel about said rules

3. Thou shall respect the decisions of both those who choose to and choose not to ride under these rules

4. Thou shall not find that riders not carrying whips “proves” they don’t care about safety. Most can’t afford to pay the fines and as they ride horses for a living, risking their health is a regular occurrence. Clearly those who choose NOT to ride don’t find that risk acceptable due to safety concerns

5. Thou shall find that someone will win every race and saying that so and so winning with this or that style because of or in spite of no whip is ludicrous conjecture

6. If thou doesn’t admit that these races look different, thou is kidding themselves or thou has no idea what thou is looking at. In a lot of ways they look like standardbred qualifiers

7. Thou shall not chastise a bettor who chooses to not bet the Monmouth or California or anywhere else that that has severely restricted whip rules. Your opinion doesn’t matter, their dollars do

8. Thou shall not chastise those bettors that do choose to play Monmouth or California despite the whip rules. We need all the help we can get and in the end the state governing bodies are the real enemy not the local horsemen.

9. Thou whom lives in fear of animal rights groups are assisting them

10. Thou shall listen to the Going in Circles Big Monday show for far more details