If you were a reporter

[chrisforbes]

If you a reporter at a decent size newspaper or internet site and your editor told you he wanted you to write a weekly story on horse racing for a 6 week trial period for publishing on sunday's that if did well would lead to a weekly sunday article all year, what would you write about and why......oh no topic or topics were off limits as well...

chris forbes

[Robert Goren]

No fluff pieces about owners, trainers, jockeys or trainers. It would be about the betting and the people who bet on the races. I remember one of the most interesting pieces about horse racing in the local news paper was about a local guy, Steven Walker, who won the first national NHC contest years ago.

[jballscalls]

No fluff pieces about owners, trainers, jockeys or trainers. It would be about the betting and the people who bet on the races. I remember one of the most interesting pieces about horse racing in the local news paper was about a local guy, Steven Walker, who won the first national NHC contest years ago.

it has to be about someone with a good personal story or a huge score or something. I can't imagine reading about how a guy structures his late pick 3 for $18 would have any kind of appeal to anything but a hard core audience.

TVG showed a show with a couple Del Mar handicappers a few years ago, and in my opinion it was terribly uninteresting. However there was a story about Sheldon Finklestein who was battling cancer and still competing in contests, that because it had a personal story along with the betting I found really interesting.

That's why in Luck they had the horseplayers buy into a horse, because their characters would have garnered no interest if they were just playing the Pick 6 every day.

People point to Poker showing Poker players and how that boomed. It boomed because they showed the big tournaments and huge scores. They also showed the guys with huge personalities (hellmuth, farha, matusow etc). I work at a small time track, so we don't see many high rollers, but if you can find some players with great personalities who are playing huge stakes or have a great side story, it could be really captivating.

[Stillriledup]

There was a race many years ago at Santa Anita, it was part of a HUGE pick 6 carryover day......bombs had won all day, the pool was in the millions, there was a 30-1 shot in the last race that was alive to something like 4.4 million (one winner of course) and the horse made a huge move, circled the field and was in the process of crushing the field as a going away winner when he broke down with 70 yards remaining in the race. I'd love to hear a story about THAT person who was alive to that horse, the true definition of a bridge jumper if there ever was one.

Obviously, its too late to find out who that was (or, maybe not) but i do agree with RG, there arent enough articles about bettors and people who take this game very seriously.