- The select portion of the Keeneland yearling sale ended on Tuesday, and sorry if I didn't pay it too much any attention. Maybe it's the election, the sorry state of the economy, the endless wars. But the notion of sheikhs and Texas oilmen and investment bankers spending obscene sums on young horses not only doesn't particularly interest me this year, but I find it rather perverse. The average for the select session dropped 12%, who cares, really.
NTRA Pres/CEO Alex Waldrop completely misses the point in his post on the proceedings entitled Attracting More Owners. Perhaps that would be an appropriate title for the latter days of this sale, or for more pedestrian auctions such as the one at Timonium. As commenter Kevin Morris notes over there:
Another publicity angle that may be worth doing would be to focus a bit more on the opportunities to buy reasonably priced yearlings, instead of giving all the coverage to the high end during the sales - just hearing that $7.7 million was too low a bid to buy a certain horse would make any neophyte worth less than a billion run away.Not to mention the fans. It's exactly this kind of extravagance which is at the roots of the economics that have brought us the sparse campaigns and early retirements that make this game virtually impossible to market as anything other than a gambling enterprise.
8 Comments:
Alan,
These Ultra-Rich Democrats like Pelosi,Kerry,Kennedy and others, have they ever done anything for Horseracing?
Have they ever purchased a Horse?
Also,and I'd like you to try to be fair.
Which party does more for Horseracing in New York and the U.S. as a whole.
Thanks
As far as I can tell neither party does anything for horse racing. I can't think of a single Dem that has any proiminent role in racing, and while Mitch McConnell in theory does help out racing, that's offset by Kyl's anti gambling stance, and it's really probably more because he's trying to help Kentucky's economy than showing he cares about the sport.
Every owner I know is a Dem (and hey, most of them are women under 45), but alas, they are all only sort of wealthy, not arms dealer wealthy.
Maybe someday...
If Kyl ever gets his way there will be no gambling on the internet. Go Barney.
RG
Over the past several years, I have often felt that the money spent at sales is obscene.
- Green monkey
Well, it's a little less obscene this year, way fewer multi-million yearlings. And most of those buying on the first two days really are Republicans (or worse).
I think Steve Zorn is right.
Republicans support Horseracing more than Democrats.
>>Republicans support Horseracing more than Democrats.
Horseshit too.
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