John Pricci

First, it was Jess Jackson, owner of 2007 Horse of the Year Curlin, that pleaded for help. Now it’s my turn, a former ink-stained wretch who traded in an old Underwood for a new Toshiba laptop. Congress, please help.

No, I’m not crazy. I fully understand the possible pitfalls here. Like Bill Burbas, a 64-year-old flat-bed driver who rescued me on the New York Thruway after a throttle position sensor, whatever that is, rendered my 2007 Subaru powerless, I, too, have lost faith in the system.

Burbas, salt of the earth life-long Democrat, worries that Barack Obama will be another Jimmy Carter — well meaning but ineffectual — and believes America never again will be the country he grew up in. Technology can’t save it; things have gone too far.

What was the old slogan; better living through chemistry? Well, it’s that kind of technology that’s gotten racing into a mess from which many of the well meaning — inside and outside the industry — believe it can never recover.

I’m being an alarmist? The game is bigger than us all? It was once. But it’s not bigger than public perception. Racing’s approval rating is somewhere around that of Congress or the lame duck, lame brain in the White House.

But, for better or worse, it’s the only system we have.

I’m not naïve enough to believe it was ever strictly hay, oats and water. In a game of big, fast money, people will take an edge. It’s human nature.

Longing for the good old days?

Under the tutelage of Tom Smith, inducted into Racing’s Hall of Fame in 2000 via the Historic Review Committee, the legendary Seabiscuit went on to win 33 of the 89 races, setting 16 track records in the process.

But a year after leaving the employ of C.S. Howard, he received a lengthy suspension for drug violations. So, in retrospect, does that somehow make Seabiscuit something less than? Isn’t it too bad that question needed begging?

Clichés are true, of course. Racing is a microcosm of what happens in life. But in no small measure is it ironic that, despite it’s excesses, this country remains puritanical in so many ways? You need not be a zealot to be a person that cares for the ethical treatment of animals, especially those that helped make America great.

Once a major pastime, racing now exists on the sports periphery. It has become a victim of its own success vis a vis its most visible prize, the one steeped in Americana. That prize is the Kentucky Derby, first leg of America’s Triple Crown.

Breeding a Derby champion no longer is about durability and longevity. It’s about speed and power. Everybody knows that, even in Washington D.C.

By now, the most casual of sports fans know what’s wrong with the racing industry, and therein lies its problem. That perception is out there. The problem for the industry is that perception in this case is built on facts.

Even racing’s harshest critics can accept that accidents can and do happen. But not when there’s so much evidence that man is causing the predisposition that leads to so many of these accidents. We breed a faster, more powerful race horse, pump it up with chemical additives, and keep it racing on therapeutic medication.

What was it that one owner-breeder said in last week’s House subcommittee hearing: The body of Schwarzenegger on the legs of Don Knotts?

In the dictionary, look up the word: “ther-a-peu-tic, adj.1. used in treating disease: relating to, involving, or used in the treatment of disease and disorders 2. maintaining health: working or done to maintain health.”

Nowhere in the definition are the words “to perform at optimum level pain free while infirm.”

Many horsemen and horsewomen I know take better care of their animals than they do themselves. Trainers understand the argument that horses cannot decide for themselves whether or not they want to perform through artificial means, but they also hide behind racing’s permissive rules. But there are pressures.

When livelihoods include factors over which those responsible have no control; the pressure of the racetracks and, by extension, owners to run, and the pressure to win, not only for owners but for the stable help, most horseman will abide by the rules but some will choose to legally win by any means necessary.

Since the House subcommittee hearing, three prominent trainers, Rick Dutrow, Steve Asmussen and Larry Jones, have been cited for drug positives. And jockey Jeremy Rose was suspended an excessive six months for striking his mount in the face with a whip.

In Rose’s case, he claims it was accidental and inadvertent, trying to straighten out his lugging-in mount by hitting her on the shoulder, at once consistent with taking a standard safety precaution while trying to win a race.

Rose is one of the game’s top riders, the regular partner of dual classics winner Afleet Alex, the feel good story of 2005. The horse’s trainer, Howard Wolfendale, accepted Rose’s explanation and apology, and is still using Rose on his horses.

These suspensions can be viewed as the game getting tough while in the spotlight‘s glare, proving that it can police itself. But it also is an industry known for making examples of people before going back to business as usual.

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