National Standards and Consistency: How About The Stewards?

[andymays]

Paulick Report: STEWARDING UNIFORMITY?

http://www.paulickreport.com/blog/paulick-report-forum-brought-to-you-by-breeders-cup-stewarding-uniformity/

Excerpt:

As chairman of the Racing Officials Accreditation Program, Stan Bowker has the formidable task, among other things, of getting stewards in various racing states to go about their jobs in uniform fashion. Horseplayers who sit in simulcast parlors viewing races from coast to coast, like National Football League fans who watch games each week from around the United States, want to see the races judged the same at one track as they are at another. That isn’t happening.

[The_Knight_Sky]

Consistency? Uniformity?

I'd settle for Transparency.

Why not install a web cam in the booth and get a detailed
audio-visual description of what they did - and why.

As a matter of course, this presentation would include the use of a telestrator
along with a graphics, and outline the precise rule in the rule book.

[bane]

I'm sorry but horse racing governs itself and you will never have stewards the same at every track. Nor should their be a central governing body on horse racing, for gods sake that last think you need in racing is more bureaucracy!

Hell, that last thing you need is another excuse for them to tax us!

[Stillriledup]

We view 'racing' as the same as the 'nfl' as a country wide 'league' with 'teams' (see tracks) and whatnut. The truth is very far from reality.

Tracks in the USA are just gambling centers who just by happenstance, use horses racing as their entertainment. We think its the other way around, we think the horses came first and the tracks exist for the horses. Its actually the horses are just a small part of what is trying to get accomplished, and that is to get 20 cents out of every dollar you spend.

Even though all these different tracks have horses in common, they are really completely seperate 'leagues' who run under their own rules. To get some rich, older, set in their ways businessmen (like Stronach for example) to admit to let some national body tell him how to run HIS racetrack, well, we might as well just sit in a cornfield in the middle of Iowa waiting for pigs with wings to pass us by.

Fans would LOVE a national body ruling all racetracks with an iron fist, but why would Frank Stronach let some national commissioner tell him what to do? It doesnt make any sense for him to give up control to the Roger Goodell of horse racing.

[OTM Al]

Kind of hard to have national consistency when rules are local and do vary a little. For example, in some striking another horse with the whip is an automatic dq and in others it's a judgement call.