The Paulick Distort

Pull the Pocket has an interesting article on the all too close-knit relation between racing press and industry. From computer gaming to wine, from model rail roads to fashion, the problem that the special interest media is both too personally connected with and too financially dependent on the industry it covers to really take a critical point of view is one found in every area. What really caught my eye though was not the topic itself but one of the comments.

In it, web journalist and former Bloodhorse editor-in-chief Ray Paulick, mentioned in the article as having a considerable bias towards the interests of horsemen, pleads "guilty as charged", adding that "without the horsemen, there will be no horses" and that "we need to do more for fans and horsemen...if we do that successfully, the tracks will succeed".

There is good reason for the coziness between racing journalists and horsemen. Everyone who spent decades in the sport will have become friendly with a large number of horsemen, so on a personal level it's understandable that racing columnists wouldn't want them to get hurt. Also, with the possible exception of Andrew Beyer, no racing journalist has the standing not to risk his job when confronting the industry. Since the racing media is financed almost exclusively by industry advertising, who do you think they would ultimately side with in a standoff between horsemen and a columnist. Still, there is a difference between avoiding a losing battle and actively lobbying for the horsemen’s interests, especially where it conflicts with the interests of the sport (and fans).

Mr. Paulick's claim that not siding with the horsemen would leave the sport without horses is an oversimplification to the point where it becomes an insult to the reader’s intelligence. Is he actually proposing that the sport couldn't exist with a lower number of horses and race dates than we have now? How then does he explain the success of Hong Kong’s two race tracks, each running less than 10 races a week? Or the existence of successful tracks in South American countries, all of them with a much smaller pool of horses and horsemen than in the US.

Horse racing, after all, isn't a welfare system, it’s a professional sport/entertainment industry. Does Golf succeed because it sees to it that wannabe-pros who regularly miss the cut on the Northern Arizona tour still make enough income to give them a living? It doesn't. Horsemen are professionals just like actors or baseball players, which means that either they’re good enough to pay their dues or they’ll have to search for another profession. The interest of racing jurisdictions and the racing media should be the well-being of the sport, because that’s the one thing everything else ultimately depends on. In the long run, tracks succeed only when the sport succeeds, which won’t happen as long as it ignores the most basic rules of supply and demand in order to keep every horseman's boat afloat.