Some raw numbers for an industry in peril:

-national horseracing handle down 21.5% since 2005 (BusinessWeek, 5/5/11)
-unadjusted for inflation, total U.S. handle on pace to hit its lowest level since 1995 (Daily Racing Form, 8/4/11)
-inflation-adjusted NY handle 20% of what it was in 1974 (NY Times, 6/10/10)
-the NY Racing Association (NYRA) will lose around $11 million this year (Daily Racing Form, 7/20/11)
-Equibase reports that 1st Qtr 2011 wagering is down 27.8% from 1st Qtr 2004 (Daily Mail, 4/5/11)
-this past December, all NYC OTB sites (representing about 45% of NY’s total handle) were closed for good (NY Times, 12/8/10)

Writing in The NY Times in 2010, Bennett Liebman, former Government Law Center Director at Albany Law School and current Cuomo Administration gaming expert, said that horseracing “was almost the entire gambling market 40 years ago,” and “pari-mutuels (horse racing, dog racing and jai-alai) probably are down to about 3 percent of the gambling industry.” From everything to 3% in four short decades. Little wonder handwringing is the order of the day.

Last November, Governor Patterson’s office announced plans for a new Indian casino near Monticello Racetrack in Sullivan County. The racing industry reacted like the desperate entity it is. NYRA board member and prominent trainer Rick Violette said, (Daily Freeman, 11/24/10) “It’s just unconscionable.” Unconscionable? And Donald Groth, Catskill OTB president, remarked, “All of this gambling is destroying OTB.” The NY Post reported (11/22/10) that an analysis from Genting NY, the Aqueduct racino developer (slated to open this year) and major Monticello stockholder, “assumes the Monticello facility would be forced to close altogether.” On the more recent possibility of a Shinnecock casino on Long Island, Genting official Colin Au said, (Saratogian, 6/20/11) “It would be disastrous. We would probably have to close shop.”

And, of course, this crisis is not unique to NY. The Baltimore Sun reports (2/27/11) that Maryland faces the grim prospect of losing its four OTB locations, as total OTB betting from 1995-2009 dropped almost in half. The owner of the state’s largest OTB site puts it rather bluntly: “We’re hanging by our fingernails.” Another parlor owner says: “Everyone’s going to Charles Town and Delaware [tracks with full casino games] because that’s where all the action is.”

As Ohio debates whether to allow racinos, The Plain Dealer writes: (4/2/11) “Turning the state’s tracks into racinos is a matter of survival, say those who work in the horse-racing industry, which has seen betting fall almost 60 percent in the last 10 years, from $596 million to $253 million.” In Illinois, the situation is even more dire. State Rep. Lou Lang, who has sponsored legislation to allow the state’s five tracks to incorporate slots, is succinct: (Chicago Tribune, 4/6/11) “The horse-racing industry is dying on the vine.” Some, though, seem less-than-sympathetic. Elgin Mayor Ed Schock: “They’re already getting a subsidy [riverboat casinos are required to help subsidize racetracks]. If people aren’t interested in going to horse racing in enough numbers, it would seem horse racing isn’t viable anymore.”

More and more, racinos are becoming racing’s lifeline. When the NYS Legislature first approved them in the form of Video Lottery Terminals in 2001 (initially, stately Saratoga was to be spared this indignity but ended up opening the very first in 2004), Yonkers GM Bob Galterio said, (NY Times, 10/26/01) “I think it’s going to save harness racing in New York. Yonkers Raceway would certainly have closed down.”

The animal rights position holds that horseracing is nothing more than exploitation of the weaker and vulnerable for money. This position is born of facts. Racing proponents, in contrast, must resort to diversions, deceits, and outright lies in order to sell their product to an increasingly educated and disinterested public. They talk of pampered horses doing what comes naturally (whips and bits?); the beauty and elegance of equines in full stride; and their supposed sport’s regal history, complete with manipulative movies like Seabiscuit and Secretariat. The self-important wits at ESPN even named the latter the 35th greatest athlete of the 20th Century. If all this were true and horseracing was not merely a vehicle for gambling, then the industry wouldn’t find itself on the precipice; instead, it would be flourishing with those just there to watch. Vacuous nonsense.

If, as hoped, horseracing has entered an extended hospice stage, then the industry should look inward and not villainize government, which historically has been its most ardent supporter, and Indian casinos. For perhaps, just perhaps, the pervasive doping, catastrophic breakdowns, shameful neglect, heartless auctions, and gut-wrenching slaughter have affected public sensibility. Even former NYRA Director Liebman concedes that corruption, drugs, whips, and injuries “have contributed to the public perception that horse racing is a cruel sport.”

While I am not blind to the destructive nature of addictive gambling, sympathy for autonomous human beings has its limits. Besides, for most people, slots and scratch-offs provide harmless fun (and a boost to state coffers). So I say, open more casinos (not racinos, which subsidize racing) and create new lottery games. Exploit the hell out of poker chips, blackjack tables, and lotto balls; leave the animals out of it.

“Leaders of the reform movement — including mainstays like Arthur Hancock, who has raised three Kentucky Derby winners, and Roy and Gretchen Jackson, who raced Barbaro — believe that American racing has no bigger problem than its image as a drug culture.” (Jim Squires, NY Times, 6/10/11)

“A horse that’s not feeling pain may keep on trying to the point where it has a catastrophic breakdown. Humans, in theory, at least can make a choice as to whether to go to work while using painkillers. Horses don’t have that choice; we make it for them.” (Steve Zorn, NY Times, 5/14/11)

This past May, the House and Senate saw the introduction of companion bills, H.R.1733 and S.886 (Interstate Horseracing Improvement Act of 2011), that seek to eliminate performance-enhancing drugs in horseracing. In advance of presenting their legislation, Senator Tom Udall and Representative Ed Whitfield penned an opinion piece calling for congressional action in the absence of a unified governing body. America, they say, stands virtually alone in allowing race-day anti-bleeding medications (Squires says 95-98% of racehorses receive treatment, even though the vast majority do not require it) like Lasix (“comments on past performance sheets highlight ‘first-time Lasix’ as a betting angle”). And, they find “the doping [anti-inflammatory pain killers] of sore horses appalling,” pointing out “that the U.S. horse fatality rate is more than three times higher than in comparable British flat racing.”

But even when the racing industry appears to be acquiring conscience, it cannot help but betray its true core. From the “Findings” section: “The use of performance-enhancing drugs in horseracing adversely affects interstate commerce, creates unfair competition, deceives horse buyers and the wagering public, weakens the breed of the American Thoroughbred, is detrimental to international sales of the American Thoroughbred, and threatens the safety and welfare of horses and jockeys.”

It is no accident that the welfare of horses is listed sixth, and last. Also: “The horseracing industry represents approximately $40,000,000,000 to the United States economy annually and generates nearly 400,000 domestic jobs.” Drugs, in truth, threaten to undermine the integrity of the sport with the only constituency who really matters, the gambler. Steve Zorn writes: (5/14/11) “The momentum, it seems, is building for a historic reversal of recent decades’ trend toward allowing more and more drug use. In principle, that’s a good thing…. First, the health of the racing industry depends on betting, and bettors are, understandably, not eager to pour their money into a game that they suspect is fixed.”

There is, of course, wonderful irony in all this: In the wake of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was compelled to act decisively, and harshly, in order to protect his sport from gamblers. Today, many in the racing establishment seek to act decisively, and harshly (the bill calls for escalating penalties, including three strikes and out), in order to protect their industry for gamblers.

So while I have no doubt that the congressmen are genuinely saddened when thoroughbreds like Eight Belles crumble, this bill, in the final analysis, is no more than a charade. As proof, one need only ask this simple question: Why, when detrimental effects on the horses’ health were (are) obvious to all with common sense, is this only now being seriously addressed after decades of turning the other way? Short answer, desperation from a shaky industry: Zorn says that national handle is down 25% over the last three years, and according to the Daily Racing Form, the NY Racing Association will lose $11 million this year. The NY Times reports that inflation-adjusted “New York racing handle is approximately 20 percent of what it was in 1974,” and unadjusted for inflation, the DRF says handle is on pace “to hit its lowest level since 1995.”

The essence of horseracing is no different than that of roulette, only the wheel isn’t whipped to perform (by the way, to those who would call horseracing a sport, the burden falls to cite any other sport where lashes provide the motivation), will not shatter bones, will not languish on retirement farms, and will not be shipped to horrific butchering houses in Canada and Mexico. If the good people involved in horseracing truly cared about the horses, they would cease and desist, making bills like H.R.1733 wholly unnecessary.

The TU’s Tim Wilkin reports that Saratoga suffered its first casualty of the season Saturday “when Rockette’s Escapade broke down at the top of the stretch” and had to be euthanized. She was four.

In 2008, the Associated Press reported that an average of three horses die each day from injuries sustained on American racetracks. And that figure is almost certainly too low: Several horseracing states claim that fatalities are not tracked, some (Kentucky) do not include training-related deaths, and only one of Florida’s three largest tracks submitted numbers. California and NY alone “combine to average more than one thoroughbred death for every day of the year.” California’s equine medical director: “Nobody really knows how big of a problem it is.”

Tim Wilkin is a sports writer, and his blog appears in the sports section. Horseracing may be many things, but one it most assuredly is not, is sport. With freakish track breakdowns, neglected and forgotten throwaways, and the surreal shackle and slash of the once celebrated, can we at least dispense with this most inappropriate euphemism? Barbaro was no athlete. And neither was Eight Belles (who shattered both front ankles, prompting Derby vet Larry Bramlage to say, “She didn’t have a front leg to stand on to be splinted and hauled off in the ambulance, so she was euthanized.”).

Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas once remarked: (AP) “I’ll guarantee you that if any one of those purists who feel like it’s an abusive sport would spend two weeks in my barn, they’d walk away a different person and have a greater appreciation for the care. Animals don’t have a say in it, but when they get to this level, they have a pretty good deal going.” Yes, exactly. The horses are incapable of giving informed consent to their participation. In what other sport does this apply? And yes, they may be pampered while earning, but at least 1,000 will not even finish their careers this year, and many thousands more will end up on the scrap heap. Can you, Mr. Lukas, guarantee their well-being after the cheering has stopped?

The NY Times recently reported (Joe Drape, 3/19/11, 4/7/11) that the Saratoga-based Thoroughbred Retirement Fund (TRF) has been grossly negligent in executing its charter (“devoted to the rescue, retirement, rehabilitation and retraining of thoroughbred racehorses no longer able to compete on the track”). Independent veterinarian Stacey Huntington examined nearly 860 horses at several farms that fall under the TRF umbrella. The Paul Mellon Estate, source of a $7 million TRF endowment, paid for Huntington’s trip. Dr. Huntington says that 98% of the horses lack basic care. 98%. For her efforts, she was fired by the TRF.

At the 4-H Farm in Oklahoma, 16 of the horses that were supposed to be there were not. Huntington presumes them dead from neglect. The other 47 were in such dismal shape (another vet, Tom Loafman, states that 80% of the survivors were well below optimal body weight; three were considered starving) that Huntington filed a report (photos included) with the local sheriff’s office. They have not acted. At a Kentucky farm, 34 horses were described as being in “poor” or “emaciated” condition, and one was euthanized for malnutrition. The TRF questions Huntington’s assessments and claims she has retreated from some of her original reporting. Not true, she says: “I have not changed my opinions. The photographs of individual reports speak for themselves. I had local veterinarians with me at each farm and they have not disagreed.” And: “Every veterinarian was invited to disagree with each horse’s evaluation and only one ever voiced a disagreement: he graded the horse one grade lower, slightly thinner, than I did.”

In defense, the TRF offers the recession as explanation. Running at a deficit for two years (and only allowed to use 5% of the Mellon endowment annually), the TRF has fallen behind in support payments (each satellite farm is supposed to receive about $3 per diem per horse, although twice that is actually needed to ensure proper care). But Dr. Huntington believes that philosophical (perhaps an unwillingness to euthanize) and administrative (deficient education and oversight) flaws at the TRF are to blame: “…T.R.F. has to recognize that their problems are of their own making. Only a 180-degree shift in attitude can help this organization survive.”

Casting a critical light on nonprofits should be routine, and Dr. Huntington is to be applauded for her efforts. But villainizing breeders, owners, and the TRF is the wrong course. Ultimate responsibility for these tragic tales lies squarely with the consumer. The logic is undeniable: track and OTB patrons necessitate organizations like the TRF. Overbreeding (fueled by the profit motive) creates a horse glut. And as racehorses live but a small percentage of their natural lifespans competing (if they even get that far), industry refuse must be addressed. On this, consensus has not been reached. Maintenance costs dictate that only a lucky few are adopted. Many more are shipped to a horrific slaughter in Canada or Mexico (after enduring a terrifying transport). Or, simply left to languish at these retirement/retraining farms. Sad, indeed.