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Originally Posted by todko
Not very many American races included also.
The next time a horse like Barbaro comes along (and it may be a while) that can run on turf and dirt the connections should really lay it down to Pimlico. They should, like professional athletes in other sports routinely do (Tiger Woods does it all the time), demand a $1 million appearance fee to run in the Preakness. And tell Belmont the same thing. If Pimlico or Belmont don't want to ante up the $$$$ then take the horse overseas and run in the Derby and the Arc. Go to Hong Kong, Dubai, and Tokyo. Let Pimlico and Belmont suffer the drop in handle -- maybe they'll wake up.
A horse like Barbaro is a professional athlete and his connections should have demanded that he be treated like one and paid like one. Show me the money. Free agency is needed here.
Shake things up. Get horseracing outside of the box where a few blue haired old ladys in NY demand Grade I status for races that attract 4 horse fields of allowance horses. Same with the west coast.
A grade I race in the US should never have a purse less than $1 million. If the purses were there then the field size would be there and you wouldn't have false GI horses going on to the breeding shed and producing more false GI horses.
People gripe about the drugs and such but it's the ruling class of horse racing (including the Graded Stakes Committee) that has caused the decline of the breed. Hell, they're just a bunch of rich people doing each other favors so that their horses make more money in the breeding shed. They don't want to ante up the $$$ for purses but they sure want to collect in the shed.
And then the Triple Crown champ from Uruguay (Invasor) comes along and beats them all up. Pathetic.
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Dude We cant compete pursewise with Dubai (for obvious reasons) and Japan (because of the huge handle). We have the same # of races on the list as Aust and more than Eng or FR. I agree the graded stakes committee isn't really helping but they dont make purses, handle does.
I never understood the argument about "bad" grade 1 winners hurting the breed. If they are bad sires the market will eliminate them. The few hundred horses they sire wont affect the breed. I mean if you threw a few mediocre allowance horses in the Jockey Club Gold Cup and made it a 7 horse field, Berny still would have had a walk in the park. A horses racing career has very little impact once they have produced a few crops.
Look at a horse like Coranados Quest or Dayjur. Both well bred, accomplished horses that got great books of mares but were not sucessful as stallions. Have they polluted the breed? No, people just stopped breeding good mares to them and they were marginalized. Easy Goer did not have much chance before he died but the ones he sired were mostly bums, he was headed in the wrng direction with a great group of mares.