Gary West
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
American horsemen and horseplayers have financed the event, their money has sustained it these many years, and any thought of taking the Breeders' Cup on a global grand tour is folly. The idea should be confined to a padded room, where it can play pinochle with its brother, the idea for a new Coke-a-Cola.
Quite simply, a European or Asian Breeders' Cup would create many more problems than it could solve, would offer many more disadvantages than advantages. Horse racing's penchant for folly usually takes a more retrograde direction, and so I don't expect to see an overseas Breeders' Cup soon. But if one were ever held, even the championship credibility of the event would be compromised. Could a three-quarter-mile race on some all-weather straight in England ever significantly affect the voting to determine the champion sprinter of North America? Not on my ballot.
Gary West... . Racing columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Gary is a past president of the National Turf Writers Association.
John T. Maguire
Racing blogger
- First impressions? What are the drawbacks? ...The benefits?
Answer: The Breeders Cup is an American invention,
holding the Breeders Cup abroad is akin to holding the
Tour de France in Ohio or a Sumo Wresting Championship
in Reykavik, Iceland, it's counter intuitive. The
Breeders Cup is not the Olympics; horses are not
humans and shipping half way around the world affects
horses.
My biggest concern is the effect a Breeders Cup held
in say Hong Kong in October would have on the fall
season in the USA. It's reasonable to expect any
trainer with a contender would ship out in late August
after Saratoga or Del Mar close in order for the horse
to acclimate. The impact on the fall season in the
USA would be substantial.
- From a practical standpoint, how would this play
out?
Answer: Racing fans are used to being preempted at 4PM
on any given Saturday but asking any fan to wake up
in the middle of the night to watch the Breeders
Cup Classic being run at Sha Tin at 4AM is asking too
much.
- Would any potential drawbacks be mitigated by the
possibility of expanded sponsorship deals and/or a
broadening of the global audience for the event?
Answer: Whether the Breeders Cup Classic is a $5
million dollar race or a $7 million dollar race is
irrelevant from this fan's point of view.
- How should Eclipse voters factor an overseas BC into
their thinking?
Answer: I think it would be 5 or 10 years before
Eclipse Award voters could reasonably be expected to
factor the variables into their votes.
John T. Maguire... A racing fan for 35 years and an occasional owner in racing partnerships. John maintains the racing blog Not to the Swift.
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Hank Wesch
San Diego Union-Tribune
A Breeders' Cup staged outside North America would certainly fit in the spirit of the event as it was conceived a quarter of a century ago. But while the time may come, I don't see it within the next decade or so.
Successful as the Cup has been and as well as it has served the racing industry to date, it has not caught on with the general sporting public in America to the degree necessary to be taken to foreign soil. The Olympics, with its sports smorgasboard, is one thing. Horse racing is a different story.
TV ratings, the be-all and end-all of sports imaging and marketing, have been moderate at best for the Breeders' Cup -- with the event run at U.S. tracks (save one) and timed for prime exposure. What's going to happen if the event is run at a venue eight or nine time zones away. Seems to me the Breeders' Cup is not an event that lends itself to tape delay. And counting on diehard fans to awake and bet at 3, 4, or 5 a.m. seems a bit much to ask even of that often astoundingly hardy breed.
Even though there is every reason to expect heavier foreign participation in the pools, isn't handle going to take a major hit?
The response by foreign horsemen, especially Europeans, and their willingness to ship long distances to the Breeders' Cups in the U.S. has been commendable. But for the most part, isn't that attributable to a few stables of the super rich? Are there enough U.S. stables willing to reciprocate if the Cup goes international? I for one am skeptical.
Taking the Cup overseas is a risky proposition, but risks are sometimes worth taking. It does have the potential to expand sponsorships and broaden global interest. Breeders' Cup officials will have to study and consider a lot of factors before making the decision.
Take your time and see if you can build an even bigger fan base (reflected not just by handle but by TV ratings and other popularity polls) before you do.
Hank Wesch... Racing columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Hank currently serves on the Board of Directors for the National Turf Writers Association.
Seth Merrow
Equidaily.com
When this story first broke last week I was expecting the news to create a firestorm. I'm not quite sure what it says about racing fans and pundits that it hasn't. Imagine the reactions on the sports pages and sports talk radio programs if the commissioner of Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was headed overseas.
And really, is the Breeders’ Cup anymore of a 'world championship' than the World Series? Heck, if Mineshaft can be named HOTY without even running in the BC, then it's hard to say it's even the North American championship, much less that of the entire globe.
And speaking of Eclipse awards: If this year's BC results were duplicated overseas, would Street Sense have won the Juvie title with only a MSW win on American soil? Certainly the magnificent Ouija Board wouldn't have won an Eclipse -- because she never would have run in this country during 2006.
Ultimately this plan doesn’t seem fair to American racing fans, who spend their time and money supporting the game all year long. To take the one day of the year when we can now expect to see the best square off against one another and move those races to a venue which would mean most fans were in bed while the races were being run, well, that's simply a slap in the face to the constituency that makes the game go in the first place.
Seth Merrow... Publisher of Equidaily.com. Seth is also a commentator and handicapper on Capital OTB-TV and his writing was featured in The Saratogian during the 2006 Saratoga race meet.
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Terry Finley
West Point Thoroughbreds
Breeders' Cup Board
In early 2006 the Breeder's Cup board members reconstituted the board and pared down the main group from 48 to 13 to enhance accountability and improve effectiveness, among other things. I have the honor of being one of those thirteen board members. One of our mandates was to look at every aspect of the Breeder's Cup. Evaluating racing venues outside the U.S. is a logical next step for the Breeder's Cup and our world championships.
Many believe Breeder's Cup day is the best day of racing each year. The Breeder's Cup Board is focused on ensuring the event is first class in every way for the horses, the horsemen and the fans.
Terry Finley... Founder and president of West Point Thoroughbreds. Terry also serves on the Breeders' Cup Board of Directors.
Paul Daley
Lowell Sun
I have no provincial attitude against holding the Breeders' Cup outside
North America. However, I sincerely believe we need to solve our own
problems in racing first. Namely, issues such as nomination fees, especially
regarding smaller breeders, a universal drug policy worldwide, track surface
inequities, and who gets in on merit versus who gets picked by an
international selection panel. For example, years ago you would never see a
trainer win at a 25 percent clip with a very large group of starters over a
long period of time. Yet, these same trainers are up for Eclipse Awards on a
regular basis. Are they any better than the trainers of yesteryear? That can
be argued, but I believe that there are equine drug salespeople, if you
will, as with human doctors, who convince trainers that drug X is not being
tested for yet, or will be a masking agent, and that it will take science Y
amount of time to catch up. Until we get more to the point of "hay, oats,
and water", I believe the big individual days of racing, and the concurrent
G1 races which determine huge breeding rights, will remain rife for
indiscretions.
However, that being said, I believe the overall concept of championship
races is solid, except for the fact that I believe young horses
(two-year-olds) are rushed into the game too soon and also I would not like
to see many of the traditional stakes races at local tracks devalued,
especially with very short fields, at the expense of one great day of
racing.
If the Breeders' Cup committee were really serious about expanding the
Cup experience to two days or more, such as with the experiment at Monmouth
Park this fall, why can't they take one or more of the established races and
move them to Friday, for a turf day or filly and mare day, for instance,
much like in England? It seems like they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
Regarding the timing of the races, vis-a-vis could we watch them in the
United States at a reasonable hour, the rest of the world has had to adjust
to us for all these years, why should we not have to reconfigure our
thinking at all? It's the same as thinking everyone else in the world should
learn English. Well, why do so many Americans feel they shouldn't have to
learn other languages? That doesn't fly with me. As long as we can advance
bet and still be able to watch the races without knowing the outcome
beforehand, so what? So, there are pluses and minuses each way.
As far as Eclipse Awards, I have voted for horses who have had only one
winning American race, such as Ouija Board, and have felt comfortable with
such, as long as the overall record is very strong. However, I feel that if
we go to a global Breeders' Cup, Eclipse guidelines will have to be set
down, and I also feel that the racing fans around the world should be
involved in a certain percentage of the vote. If the goal is global
interest, why should the fan be excluded?
Paul Daley... Writer and racing columnist for the Lowell Sun for the last fourteen years, Paul also spent twelve years at the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. He is the New England correspondent for the Blood-Horse and is currently working on a book, 'Tarnished Image', centered around the 1968 Kentucky Derby and the disqualification of Peter Fuller's Dancer's Image.
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