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Originally Posted by Grits
Anyone who can lose for 5 years is powerful and determined. I like anyone who doesn't give up. Brenda Wilson included. ..... And they don't belong in the game? Wow.
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Well... we don't know if she was fighting/struggling or she didn't care. Certainly there have always been low-level trainers that do NOT want to win (but they do want cash SOME checks for maybe coming in third or whatever), they don't want their horses claimed, they don't want to be forced into higher conditions, etc.
They just want their stall space and they basically live there and they get to take care of their "pets". Some of these people own their own horses, others may be effectively fleecing their owners for the day rate (owners who do really want to win some races). I don't know whether that's the case here, making no accusations, but there is an argument to be made that the game isn't well-served by those types of operations. (You could probably make a counter-argument as well.)
I remember we were discussing a while back some rule at Mountaineer about how a horse or trainer (I forget) had to at do such-and-such every X time period (be in-the-money, something like that) or they would lose their stalls. And so when one of these type of operators that wasn't really into winning would run up against losing their space suddenly their horse would run a great race out of the blue when they had been doing nothing but running in a circle without effort since the last time they almost were kicked out.
Any assumptions we make about a losing record and what that person's feelings and motivations are just pure speculation. They could be fighting as hard as they can or they could be purposely tanking. Neither is unlikely. It would look the same from the outside either way, at least without a detailed analysis. (Because patterns such as at Mountaineer are not hard to spot once you know what you are looking for.)
