A Solution That Will Never Be Used

by Ralph the Cat

What was Mountaineers best racing season for bettors and horsemen? Was it 2002? maybe 2003? or even 2004? Those couple of years would be my answer. The claiming game was RED hot and the bettors had wide open fields. What has changed besides the obvious? The death of Dale, the opening of PID, I could go on and on. One problem strikes me more than anything, it has become a growing concern of mine and I feel its being majorly overlooked by management. Here's the problem, try and answer me this, why is it that there are horses that are only worth $500 running in $5k claiming races? Why does the claiming races for lifetime horses skip from $5k to $10k to $15k? and then the wide open races only go from $5k to $7.5k to $10k to $15k etc.?

Before you get the wrong idea and say, look, Mountaineer management cant control the stock that's entered in their races, hear me out. Mountaineer management can fix the problem, but that would require extra time and work, so managements simple answer to the question is its what the horsemen want. It's not. Hear me out, it's not! Maybe 5 years ago it was in the best interest to give Mountaineer a new image of a "bigger and better" track by having the lowest claiming race a $5k race. But by golly Churchill Downs bottom claimer is $5k, we aren't Churchill Downs people! We are the mountain located in a little town called Chester! Great, we gained Grade II status for our WV Derby but does that mean putting the proper tag on our claiming horses is a crime? Would it make it a Grade III again because we run $4k claiming races? Very, very successful and big name tracks still run bottom races of $4k, but Mountaineer chooses not to.

In the middle of 2004 management changed the condition book to the present racing structure. Before that we had open races of 4k,5k,6.5k,10k,12.5k etc... it was a great structure. We had both 4k and 5k condition races as well. Please! Lets go back! By utilizing this racing structure you create more competitive fields. Guys with red hot horse used to drop into $5k races and avoid the $4k level, it wasn't a guarantee but more often than none the $5k races proved to be tougher than the $4k races. It separated these cheaper horse, because a trainer would be plan stupid to think he could compete in a $5k race if his horse didn't run good for $4k last time out. Every horse that was entered in for $5k seemed like a decent horse, while the #4k races seemed to draw the lowest quality animals like it intended. If we have 20+ horse entered in a MDN $5k race or 2 Lifetime race, why don't we offer a lower and higher tag? why should we run races where there are 2 horses in a race that will run 20 lengths apart?

Am I the only one here that thinks the current $5k to $10k lifetime jump is insane too? So my horse wins an impressive $5k race for non winners of two lifetime and now I have to go to $10k if I think my horse will get claimed next time out? Charlestown has a fantastic claiming structures that makes each and every field a bit more exciting than Mountaineers fields. But why do I even waste my time, convincing Mountaineer management and the top horsemen alike of this would be like convincing God himself that he didn't create the world that we know of.