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11-13-2019, 12:39 PM
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#421
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Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 8,798
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nitro
Now that's a silly example! A single stakes race!
You seem to think that people are perfect. When in fact they can often make poor judgement calls for any number reasons in every walk of life.
Sometimes these mistakes can cause undesirable consequences.
That doesn't mean that when they make a decision that they're intentionally trying to create an unanticipated dilemma.
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Nobody's accusing the Mongolian Groom people of intentionally harming the horse. That's a red herring.
What they are accusing them of doing (and I am not saying they did it- I tend to agree with you that this doesn't happen very often) is exactly what McMahon did in the Belmont- ignoring evidence that the horse was hurting in order to run in a big race.
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11-13-2019, 12:42 PM
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#422
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Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 8,798
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Quote:
Originally Posted by foregoforever
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I'm glad that the author called out Whitney Tower. He was one of the great villains of the Majestic Prince saga.
Here's the analogy- imagine if, in response to Doug O'Neill scratching I'll Have Another from the Belmont, a powerful New York sportswriter writting for a major publication wrote 2 columns calling O'Neill a chicken who was afraid to run his horse and was shortchanging the fans.
That's exactly what Tower did to John Longden. And Majestic Prince was the victim of this.
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11-13-2019, 12:48 PM
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#423
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Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2019
Posts: 371
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dilanesp
No it wasn't. 4,000 to 6,000 was common.
It obviously wasn't anything like the old days (40,000+ every weekend), but there were definitely people attending the races. I went there a lot.
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Disagree. I live within driving distance of the track, and literally nobody showed up on the weekdays. Maybe a couple of thousand showed up on the weekends, but the track was hemorrhaging in paid attendance for a decade or so. This is why during the last day of operating as a racetrack, they got 13,000 to show up and the long time patrons said that if those people had showed up during those last couple of years, it would've never closed.
Last edited by horsefan2019; 11-13-2019 at 12:51 PM.
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11-13-2019, 12:51 PM
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#424
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Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 8,798
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Quote:
Originally Posted by horsefan2019
Disagree. I live within driving distance of the track, and literally nobody showed up on the weekdays. Maybe a couple of thousand showed up on the weekends, but the track was hemorrhaging in paid attendance for a decade or so.
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The track was hemorraghing paid attendance for three decades, not one. But it was a giant facility, built for 65,000, and 2,000 people (a Thursday crowd) looked like nothing.
And they ran Friday nights and the Friday night crowds were always bigger than the Thursday crowds.
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11-13-2019, 12:57 PM
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#425
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Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2019
Posts: 371
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dilanesp
The track was hemorraghing paid attendance for three decades, not one. But it was a giant facility, built for 65,000, and 2,000 people (a Thursday crowd) looked like nothing.
And they ran Friday nights and the Friday night crowds were always bigger than the Thursday crowds.
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No horse racing track is going to get 65,000 anymore, but the fact is Hollywood Park was doing worst than the neighboring tracks (Santa Anita, Del Mar) because of the neighborhood it was located in. Remember this was Inglewood in the 2000's where the sports teams abandoned the city (Lakers, Kings), and unless you were going there for the horse racing, there was zero reason to step afoot in the city.
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11-13-2019, 01:37 PM
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#427
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Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 8,798
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Quote:
Originally Posted by horsefan2019
No horse racing track is going to get 65,000 anymore, but the fact is Hollywood Park was doing worst than the neighboring tracks (Santa Anita, Del Mar) because of the neighborhood it was located in. Remember this was Inglewood in the 2000's where the sports teams abandoned the city (Lakers, Kings), and unless you were going there for the horse racing, there was zero reason to step afoot in the city.
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Not true. The Hollywood Park Casino drew significant business (and continues to, to this day), and the Forum, other than for a period of time when it was a church, has continued to host concerts and boxing.
Also, there was definitely a gap between Santa Anita's attendance and Hollywood Park's between approximately 1984 and 2010. But since 2010, Santa Anita is way down. The only difference between Santa Anita and pre-closure Hollywood Park is that Santa Anita can still draw a huge crowd for a special occasion like opening day or the Santa Anita Derby.
Del Mar is way way down too, but it is still the attendance leader in California.
Last edited by dilanesp; 11-13-2019 at 01:40 PM.
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11-13-2019, 02:35 PM
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#428
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Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 3,641
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FenceBored
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They examined the years "for which data is available". 
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11-13-2019, 03:29 PM
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#429
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$2 Showbettor
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: The Villages
Posts: 2,578
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FenceBored
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So the Hong Kong rate is the lowest of them all. It just seemed like common sense that running all older geldings and getting control of the breed like they do, would make it safer for the athletes. This is the first time I've seen the numbers to back this up. I believe Hong Kong only runs of turf and synthetic.
A part of me is somewhat skeptical of the numbers. Why isn't there stats for British steeplechase races? That has to be the worst of them all.
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11-13-2019, 03:31 PM
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#430
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Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 8,798
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Redboard
So the Hong Kong rate is the lowest of them all. It just seemed like common sense that running all older geldings and getting control of the breed like they do, would make it safer for the athletes. This is the first time I've seen the numbers to back this up. I believe Hong Kong only runs of turf and synthetic.
A part of me is somewhat skeptical of the numbers. Why isn't there stats for British steeplechase races? That has to be the worst of them all.
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Hong Kong runs mostly on turf, but Sha Tin has an "all weather" track. I had always thought that meant synthetic (and it looks synthetic in person), but I was recently informed that it is in fact a high tech dirt.
But 80 percent or so of HKG's races (2 cards a week) are on grass.
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11-13-2019, 03:38 PM
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#431
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Registered User
Join Date: Dec 2011
Posts: 4,285
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dilanesp
Nobody's accusing the Mongolian Groom people of intentionally harming the horse. That's a red herring.
What they are accusing them of doing (and I am not saying they did it- I tend to agree with you that this doesn't happen very often) is exactly what McMahon did in the Belmont- ignoring evidence that the horse was hurting in order to run in a big race.
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Reading the book that Forgoforever referenced it said that Longden thought the horses was fine and that McMahon would not run an injured horse. So Longden thought that they weren't running a hurt horse just a tired horse. So I guess for Longden there wasn't any evidence that the horse was hurting.
__________________
Best writing advice ever received: Never use a long word when a diminutive one will suffice.
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11-13-2019, 03:40 PM
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#432
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Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 510
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dilanesp
Not true. The Hollywood Park Casino drew significant business (and continues to, to this day), and the Forum, other than for a period of time when it was a church, has continued to host concerts and boxing.
Also, there was definitely a gap between Santa Anita's attendance and Hollywood Park's between approximately 1984 and 2010. But since 2010, Santa Anita is way down. The only difference between Santa Anita and pre-closure Hollywood Park is that Santa Anita can still draw a huge crowd for a special occasion like opening day or the Santa Anita Derby.
Del Mar is way way down too, but it is still the attendance leader in California.
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I call Bull Shit. Inglewood is still the last place you want to be parking on the street and think your car will still be there.
The Breeders Cup attendance #s were false too. The parking lots were not full so that tells me there wasn't 40,000.
Last do ya'll get up and go right to this thread to keep it alive?
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11-13-2019, 03:47 PM
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#433
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Vancouver Island
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 1,747
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Intresting long read from 1993
THE BREAKING POINT
A RISING TOLL OF RACETRACK BREAKDOWNS HAS SHAKEN PUBLIC CONFIDENCE AND PUT THE THOROUGHBRED INDUSTRY AT A CROSSROADS
https://www.si.com/vault/1993/11/01/...t-a-crossroads
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11-13-2019, 04:03 PM
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#434
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 3,761
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Redboard
So the Hong Kong rate is the lowest of them all. It just seemed like common sense that running all older geldings and getting control of the breed like they do, would make it safer for the athletes. This is the first time I've seen the numbers to back this up. I believe Hong Kong only runs of turf and synthetic.
A part of me is somewhat skeptical of the numbers. Why isn't there stats for British steeplechase races? That has to be the worst of them all.
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What's the point of comparing flat to jumps? We all know jumps are riskier. Wiki claims that the British Horseracing Authority gives the number as 4 per 1000 starters but it's a deadlink so I can't tell what year(s) that covers.
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11-13-2019, 04:22 PM
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#435
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clean money
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Maryland
Posts: 23,559
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requiescat in pace
__________________
Preparation. Discipline. Patience. Decisiveness.
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