Live long enough, my fellow sports fan, and you'll realize the popularity of a particular sport is not guaranteed to last forever. The landscape in tastes shifts slowly, bordering on imperceptibly. But after several years, it's easy to look back and try to figure out what happened.
Exhibit A for this particular discussion is horse racing as a spectator sport. It was a major player in the sports and leisure business for many decades, dating back to the 19th century. But it more or less has faded, due to a number of factors. As author Chuck Klosterman points out in his book on football, horses were a huge part of everyday life around 1900. But as American life became more urban and more motorized, the four-legged animals faded out of view in many cases.
Then throw in the rise of other sports, mostly pro football but certainly basketball and hockey too. By the 1950s, horse racing was still in a niche, but a good-sized one. But then it lost its monopoly on gambling to other activities, such as casinos. The sport never did really embrace television properly, either. Eventually, newspapers stopped covering the tracks on a regular basis, and the days of television sportscasters showing the finish of a race on the 11 p.m. news ended quietly. The Triple Crown races are about the only exceptions left, unless you are around Saratoga in the Adirondacks in late summer.
In recent years, there's been a new issue that has come along. While it's always been tempting to cheat in some manner in horse racing, technology in scientific research has come a long way in this area. When we see horses in the starting gate, we don't know how many of them have received a little help in the form of drugs. The horses certainly aren't talking. It can make spectators - read "bettors" - wary of following the results if it might not be a fair fight.
That's where we are today, and it's something of a starting point of Katie Bo Lillis' excellent book, "Death of a Racehorse."
Ellis takes us through a tour of the industry that is thorough and convincing. Our guide in portions of the book is Bob Baffert, one of the most successful trainers in the racing business. He's very good at what he does, and he's an outsider to the ownership side of the business that sometimes feels like it's straight out of a 19th-century PBS program. Baffert's problem is that he has had some slip-ups along the way, and has been penalized for it.
He's at the center of the first section of the book. That's followed by a recap of a major investigation that tried to reel in some "big fish" who were cheating in an attempt to have better living (in the form of wins) through racing. Then in part three, Lillis moves on to efforts to police the industry better, in part through a federal program. That's not easy in a world where laws can change from state to state and jurisdictional collisions are almost inevitable.
The shrinking nature of the sport has meant less money to be earned. That in turn has increased the pressure on trainers to win races, even if it can be left unsaid. The race tracks need horses in good condition in order to fill out their cards and keep the customers coming. And if the customers stop, then there is less demand for horses in the form of breeding - the place where the owners can cash in on a big way. No wonder some chemists keep busy in the form of creating designer drugs that might have the effect of changing the odds. It's hard for the authorities to keep up with it all.
Let's throw in one other issue. Horse racing can pop up in the news these days for an extra reason - a surprising death on the track, usually during a race. It seems there's a rash of them every so often, and that strikes a nerve - not without some justification - with those outsiders who consider horses more like pets than livestock. There's some anger when even a small percentage of the horses in a given race have an insides that resemble pharmacies. Someone has to raise the issue, since those animals don't have a voice in the discussion.
Lillis covers national security issues for CNN, and she's obviously knows how to conduct an investigation. But she has always loved horses, and she's always been a fan of Thoroughbred racing. Here the author lays out the facts thoroughly and calmly. It's not a story that is covered in the mainstream media much any more, unless someone like Baffert receives a long suspension. Therefore, this will fill in a void for those seeking information about what has been going on a bit under the surface.
No, "Death of a Racehorse" is by no means escapist reading. But it does take a good-sized look at relevant issues in the Sport of Kings. Those who are hoping that a level playing field will help horse racing regain a bit more relevance should be impressed by what's between the covers of the book.
Five stars
Learn more about this book from Amazon.com. (As an Amazon affiliate, I earn money from qualifying purchases.)
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