Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruffian1
It was a detriment to the horses and workers that were stabled at Laurel as well as Bowie and Pimlico and forced to ship and support racing 3 hours away on a good day, by van in August where you left at roughly 5 AM to get there in time for lasix treatment for the early races and typically got home between 7PM and 11PM that night. That groom worked 14- 18 hours that day. And had to be back by 6 AM the next morning.
If you chose not to run there with a stabled horse from Laurel, when the races came back, the constant threat of no stall space anymore for the horses that did not support it hung heavily over your head by management.
Yep. That's how management played.
Don't get me wrong, if you had a turf horse, the course was very nice. If you had a Va. Bred, the purses were GREAT with the added money. But all in all, August on a van going around the Washington Beltway both to and from was terrible. And if you hit an accident, you had to scratch because you missed the lasix deadline and then sit 10 hours waiting for the later horses to run before you could go home.
Racing in Va. would have been fine had it been not so far down the road. Literally the middle of nowhere.
Growing pains I guess but those that felt the most pain are forgotten now.
Doesn't seem fair in hindsight but things like this seldom are.
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Ok...Would not shipping in to Colonial be a choice?
And if a barn did not have any grass runners , would they not simply race somewhere else? Like Delaware, Parx or Monmouth?
Those tracks are closer anyway.
Look, I saw a bunch of boo hoo by Mid Atlantic based horsemen who opposed the existence of Colonial during its first iteration. They complained because they felt CNL took away horses from Maryland. How dare Virginia do such a thing. Well, they worked very hard to get the VA Horsemen to shut down CNL...They succeeded. Then, another group of horse owners and other interested parties revived the track. Because of its success , Churchill Downs Inc stepped in an bought the place. If the track wasn't doing well, I doubt the investment would have been made, if the track wasn't performing. The 2023 Meeting saw a significant increase in both on track attendance and all sources handle. Over one half million dollars in avg daily purses. Avg field size was a bit over 10 starters.
Maryland Racing....For them I have a solution.
Get better. That is how one business competes with another.
