Could Less Be More When It Comes to Race Officiating?
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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2017 HOPPERTUNITY DRAWS RAIL FOR CLARK COULD LESS BE MORE Mike Pegram, Karl Watson and Paul Weitman=s consistent WHEN IT COMES TO veteran Hoppertunity (Any Given Saturday) drew the rail Sunday for Friday=s 143rd running of the GI Clark H. at Churchill RACE OFFICIATING? Downs. The 6-year-old, who won the race in 2014, will face eight rivals as he attempts to become just the fourth horse to win two renewals of the Clark. AI=ll never forget when he won the 2014 Clark,@ trainer Bob Baffert said. AHe=s back and doing well. He=s always been right there all the time. He=s made $4 million by being right there and has always been a barn favorite. It sounds like it will be a tough Clark, so it won=t be a walk in the park by any means.@ Hoppertunity tuned up for the nine-furlong race with a four-furlong work at Santa Anita Sunday in :47.20 (2/60). (Click to cont. to p5) IN TDN EUROPE TODAY BIG WEEK AHEAD AT GOFFS Flavien Prat was fined $300 for winning ride aboard Battle of The new look Goffs November Sale of foals and breeding Midway in the the Breeders= Cup Dirt Mile. | Horsephotos stock commences today with Part 1 of foals, the first of seven days of trade. Click or tap here to go straight to TDN Europe. The Week in Review, by T.D. Thornton There are quite a few jobs at the racetrack that can be summed up under the general catchphrase Ano one really understands what you do until you screw up.@ Topping this list are stewards, who are tasked with myriad responsibilities that extend far beyond officiating the races. I had the opportunity the other day to explain to a non-racing sports fan how objections, inquiries, and disqualifications are adjudicated. This led to a sideways discussion about how racing is unique from major team sports in that 1) Its officials are often recruited from among the ranks of former participants (i.e., jockeys and trainers), and 2) How stewards frequently have to rule on cases that have nothing to do with the actual running of horse races, and/or on matters that routinely end up contested in courts of law. Yet the in-race officiating will always be the part of the job that draws the most scrutiny and criticism. It should, because it=s the most public-facing aspect of what stewards do. Cont. p3 PRESIDENT & CO-PUBLISHER Barry Weisbord @barryweisbord [email protected] SR. V.P. & CO-PUBLISHER Sue Morris Finley @suefinley [email protected] V.P., INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS Gary King @garykingTDN [email protected] EDITORIAL Monday, November 20, 2017 [email protected] Editor-in-Chief Jessica Martini @JessMartiniTDN Managing Editor Alan Carasso @EquinealTDN Senior Editor Steve Sherack @SteveSherackTDN Racing Editor Brian DiDonato @BDiDonatoTDN Associate Editors Christie DeBernardis @CDeBernardisTDN Ben Massam @BMassamTDN Joe Bianca @JBiancaTDN Assistant Editor Bobby Klatt ADVERTISING [email protected] Director of Advertising Alycia Borer Advertising Manager Lia Best Advertising Designer Amanda Crelin Advertising Assistants Owner Kaleem Shah visits with multiple-grade-I-winning millionaire Dortmund (Big Alexa Reisfield Brown) during Sunday's stallion show at Bonita Farm in Darlington, MD. 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WORLDWIDE INFORMATION International Editor Kelsey Riley @kelseynrileyTDN [email protected] European Editor Emma Berry [email protected] Associate International Editor Heather Anderson @HLAndersonTDN Newmarket Bureau, Cafe Racing Sean Cronin & Tom Frary [email protected] 60 Broad Street, Suite 100 Red Bank, NJ 07701 732-747-8060 | 732-747-8955 (fax) www.TheTDN.com TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 3 OF 8 • THETDN.COM MONDAY • NOVEMBER 20, 2017 The Week in Review (cont. from p1) The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) is unique among North American racing jurisdictions regarding the amount of If the sport is to get serious about improving what racing=s online information it makes available to the public in three-person boards of Areferees@ do on a daily basis, a simple easy-to-access formats. The detailed minutes of the stewards solution exists: reassign some of the more bureaucratic, assigned to Del Mar Thoroughbred Club that were posted on the behind-the-scenes tasks to other functionaries and specialists CHRB website last week provide an interesting glimpse into the while at the same time requiring stewards to be more accountable minutiae that the stewards had to endure prior to officiating the and transparent about their judging of the on-track action. world championships of Thoroughbred racing. Peruse the list of rulings at any given track and it will become For example, just before the Friday Breeders= Cup races, the readily apparent how much stewards held abbreviated office mind-numbing time North hours because of the impending American stewards have to big event. Yet, the minutes devote to policing relatively reveal, they still had to deal with minor infractions: fining a report of a valet in the jockeys= backstretch workers for smoking room who allegedly shoved, under the shed row, parking in poked, and dumped a cup of restricted areas, cussing at water on the clerk of scales. security officers, and (my The valet was relieved of his favorite) Aconduct unbecoming of duties, then subsequently a pony person@ are among the dismissed by Del Mar. But is this more repetitive tasks that make the sort of thing stewards need to up the daily grind before be distracted by just prior to a stewards are expected to series of multi-million dollar competently judge races. Grade I championship races? Can Increasingly, stewards are now Del Mar | Eclipse Sportswire you imagine if the National responsible for settling Football League required its on-field officials to adjudicate a wide-ranging financial disputes between licensees. And they similar locker room dispute just before kickoff of the Super sometimes appear well outside their areas of expertise when Bowl? attempting to fashion violation rulings that can withstand A few days later, the Del Mar stewards had to intervene in a rigorous legal challenge from specialized defense attorneys. complaint over a $22,684.92 debt involving horses not stabled Racing likes to compare itself to major-league baseball, at the racetrack. You can argue either way whether any board of football, basketball, and hockey. But in no other major sport are stewards should have the authority to mediate such matters, the game officials required to rule on matters so far beyond the but that=s not the point. The real issue is that if you keep lines of play. Referees and umpires of team sports are paid far stretching the scope of what stewards are supposed to be better and have far more narrow job descriptions than racetrack concentrating on beyond what happens on the racetrack, their stewards. But they are also expected to meet much higher ability to focus on and officiate the races is bound to be standards of job performance and are subjected to multiple compromised. levels of internal review. Cont. p4 TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 4 OF 8 • THETDN.COM MONDAY • NOVEMBER 20, 2017 A possible solution might be for racing commissions and tracks But if you think of the equation in terms of lessening the to create the position of an Aadministrative steward@ whose sole stewards= overall workload in order to raise the bar of their function is to hear and rule upon any off-track violations not racing-specific job expectations, the extra costs seem more like directly related to the running and outcome of races. an investment than a gamble. You can also make the case for looking beyond the traditional pool of applicants from within the sport when attempting to fill When the Whip Comes DownY job openings on stewards= boards. Given the number of rulings Beyond the above-mentioned riff on officiating in general, two that end up getting swatted down in the post-Breeders= Cup rulings were handed down court system (particularly those involving against jockeys by the Del Mar stewards, but suspensions for drug offenses), it would neither got much play in the racing press in the seem well worth the extra up-front money in aftermath of the championships. salary to employ a legal specialist who has Flavien Prat got hit with a $300 fine for using the ability to craft stewards= rulings that the riding crop more than three times in consistently stick when they are contested in succession without giving the horse a chance to courts of law. respond for his winning ride aboard Battle of Both of these ideas would involve Midway (Smart Strike) in the GI Breeders= Cup moderate up-front costs in an industry that Dirt Mile.