A new chapter in a long story

Passages are a part of all lives and Monday is the first day in a new phase of mine.

I have been employed by one newspaper or another for my entire adult life, which is now in its 60th year. But at the end of the day on Sunday I am a free agent, retired after more than 22 years at Newsday, almost 10 before that at the Sun-Sentinel of South Florida and , but not really retired from what I’ve done for the past three decades. In fact, the reason for my retirement is to allow myself to write about thoroughbred racing, the issues, horses and people, which has become impossible within the current framework of mainstream newspapers.

The decision was a considered one, a response to the diminished interest of my long-time employer in the sport about which I write. What was once a paper that covered racing aggressively pared content, step by step to the point at which all that remains is bare-bone entries incorporated into an abbreviated handicapping analysis, results where once there were charts. Gone: Coverage of major Triple Crown preps, any race run outside New York except for the first two legs of the Triple Crown and anything that happens at Aqueduct between Nov. 1 and the Wood Memorial in April. Cut back severely: Coverage of Saratoga meeting and major autumn races at Belmont Park. Endangered: What little remains.

This is not unique to Newsday. Papers all over the United States have cut coverage of racing to the bone and eliminated positions once held by full-time turf writers. Editors point to the decline in the live audience at racetracks and conclude that is the ultimate barometer of interest. This is simply not true. I’ve heard editors repeat absolute nonsense fed by a Nevada gaming executive to a convention of sports editors and realized that he has considered the source and embraced a fallacious conclusion as gospel.

Nevertheless, I have watched what was once a fraternity of racing writers vanish. Once there were three in the Miami area who covered Gulfstream, Calder and, before its unfortunate demise, Hialeah Park. Now, there are none. Papers in Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles (down to one), and Dallas have cut racing coverage to the bone. Most still assign writers to the Triple Crown races or hire freelancers but when the highly respected Gary West, who brings an astute eye for a racehorse and a ready wit to the keyboard, was missing from the press boxes at Churchill Downs, Pimlico and Belmont last spring, it was evident that no racing writer, though few remain, is spared the bottom-line malaise in which mainstream racing journalism is now mired.

Simulcasting, off-track betting, account wagering, satellite television, high-speed communication and the Internet, not disinterest, have dispersed an involved audience and none more so than the audience in New York. It is no longer important that a few thousand people are in attendance at the races. If $10 million is wagered during an afternoon of racing in New York and the per capita amount wagered is $200 – which may actually be a bit generous – then 50,000 horseplayers, if not twice that number, participated. This would suggest a high level of interest ignored by news executives who truly believe that it is more important to devote space to high school sports than to racing.

Twenty years ago, the New York press boxes were lively, populated places, manned daily by writers and handicappers representing every paper in the nation’s largest market, a crew from the Daily Racing Form and another from the late Sports Eye. Now, one full-time writer, Ed Fountaine, enthusiastic conspiracy theorist and intrepid reporter for the New York Post, and two handicappers are present on a daily basis. Only the Post – the last newspaper in the United States outside Kentucky to devote significant space to racing -- is represented by more than one person.

Only five full-time positions remain in the United States for people writing exclusively on thoroughbred racing for general circulation newspapers. Two of those are at papers in Louisville and Lexington. The others are in Los Angeles, Washington and the aforementioned New York Post.

Yet, all the things that drew me to racing in the first place remain – both horses and the people – and I am unwilling to give up the game that has been central not only to my career but my life because it is viewed dimly by those who neither understand nor appreciate that they have turned their backs on a substantial number of people who were once their readers. Racing is more than a sport or a job, it is a lifestyle.

Since the mid-‘70s I have spent almost every day at places like Hialeah Park when it was still the best place you could ever be in January; Gulfstream Park before Frank Stronach; Saratoga, which is the best place you could be in summertime; Belmont Park, the most staid and arrogant of racetracks and one of the world’s great venues. I’ve spent some of those days at Santa Anita, one of the world’s great settings for a racetrack, Hollywood Park and Del Mar, both the old and new versions -- every time for a great race or a Breeders’ Cup; Arlington Park in three incarnations, old, tents and new. As a young man I saw Secretariat win the Canadian International at Woobine in the last start of his career and much later returned to watch Alphabet Soup beat Louis Quatorze and Cigar in the Breeders’ Classic. I once went to Greenwood during a honeymoon in Toronto. I’ve had occasion to cover stories at Ruidoso Downs, Suffolk Downs and, in Hong Kong, Happy Valley and Sha Tin. I’ve also put in my time at Calder in July and Aqueduct in February, but the slow, tedious parts of seasons in various climates are scant payback for being able to do this, my life enriched by the horses I’ve seen in their greatest moments, the people I have met over the years – all while being paid to go to the races.

It has not sucked.