The big are getting bigger and the small are going nowhere…
Thanks for sharing, Prozini.
For the sake of discussion, limiting stalls seems like an easy way for racetracks themselves to help level the playing field, as the article says. I don’t see how that would stop “free enterprise,” as Ritvo suggest. But it would send many packing for public/private training centers, meaning the tracks themselves would forfeit a lot of control over filling their races. I imagine that might be their bigger fear?
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As a relative neophyte in the racing industry other than watching/reading about racing for most of my life, seems like limiting stalls might also be counter productive for some tracks. Santa Anita, over their last meet, cancelled 3 Thursdays because they couldn’t fill the races. Del Mar is having some, IMO, “aggressive” horsemen programs for the upcoming meet to attract out of state horses.
Seems like the big owner/trainer vs small owner/trainer is the same thing you are seeing in corporate America. There are still some small, locally owned businesses but so many have gone under while the big companies (and I’m not thinking just retail) continue to grow or are themselves phased out.
In the article Tim Rivto said “There’s something so alluring about these super trainers,” he said. “It still bothersome to me as to why owners gravitate towards that.”
I think that’s the crux of the problem. I’ve never understood why anyone (who wasn’t a billionaire) would want to be with a super trainer and have their horses overseen by the assistant’s assistant.
Another issue that was touched on in the article–but only from one side–was trainers wanting to ship and run at other tracks. The article makes it sound like that’s why field sizes are small at home tracks. But try being an owner sitting at Santa Anita, for example, and waiting 6-8 weeks to race a horse who’s fit and ready to run because the races that fit his conditions either aren’t carded or don’t go–even when they appear in the condition book. It is not unusual for the races that the super trainers to be the only ones being written.
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Not a super rich owner utilizing a mega trainer myself (ha!), but I imagine the allure is access.
Personally, while this is kind of off topic, I think American racing would benefit from eliminating the “backside” and moving towards a ship in model like other countries. It would reduce overhead. It would force a resolution for a lot of stall/race politics. And it would likely change how races are written and carded. Having spent a lot of time at places like Atlantic City and Kentucky Downs, I’ve seen it work successfully. It also feels like the “super trainers” don’t/didn’t have quite as much of an advantage in those places, but that could have just been my own perception. It also could have just been the unique nature of a turf only meeting.
That might work some places but I can’t see it working in the West and particularly California.
And funny you should say access (which I assume you mean to the races written for the condition book) but that is exactly what IMO a small owner doesn’t get with the big trainers. There is no way that their horses are in the first string unless they are graded stakes horses which means that they hired the big man’s system with an assistant running the show. If the horse is a maiden, he will probably be waiting in line while the billionaire clients with the fancy stock get first crack at limited maiden special weight options. The same remains true as he goes up the conditions. Billionaires don’t want to lose to the trainer’s other horse and stuff like that could cause the whole string to move over to the next super trainer.That’s in part why it is so hard to fill races in California.
In the meantime, the big trainer may or may not know your name, may or may not let you know when the horse is in and may or may not listen to you (because he doesn’t have to). I know of an owner who wasn’t all that small and who gave a couple of mid six figure horses to one of the mega trainers. It was when the artificial surfaces were all the vogue here and the owner made it clear that he wanted to train on the off track and not run at one of the other tracks which was then hosting the ontrack meet because of concerns about the surface. The trainer had the horse a week (?), worked the horse on the track that the owner did not want to be on and the horse came out of the work bowed. Never ran but what stays with me was the conversation with the owner as I understood it. Trainer: “Got anything else?”
I’m not saying that everyone’s experience is just like that but small owners really are widgets in this equation with the big barns–easy come and easy go. I happen to think this trend is the worst thing that has happened in American racing in the last 20 years.
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If people have the time (and no life to speak of 
), Santa Anita is uniquely open about who is training which horse in the morning. Pick any month at random and see who the mega trainer is training. Then pick another month 4 - 6 months later and see how many of those horses have actually run. I’ve done it and it is an eye opening exercise.
@Pronzini That makes a lot of sense.
Not that it changes the conversation, but I meant “access” in a bit of a broader, “one stop shop” sense. You have access to different venues, etc. If your horse isn’t Santa Anita quality, its NBD to send the with the string at Los Al or possibly out of the state entirely. And in the eyes of the eternal optimist owner, I think many get stars in their eyes and believe they will have that first string horse.
Re: Shipping in and the west… I agree that it would be challenging for somewhere like SoCal to move to that format, mainly because of the expansiveness and high land prices. But somewhere like the east coast, it seems to be a no brainer to me. Horses already move so incredibly frequently. I think the biggest hurdles are the regulatory and administrative changes that would have to happen on the government and management ends.
