If you don’t know you have a problem, it’s impossible to fix it. That would seem to be the case in harness racing where tracks appear totally blind to the circumstances that in many ways have made it near impossible to wager on the sport. As someone with a 50-year background, there has been a titanic change in how races are run and how they are handicapped. Things became much more weight bearing when frontrunners became dominant no matter the track sizes. Yet in recent years, the plethora of 1-9 shots has made traditional overnight racing a minefield for casual players, with paltry returns winnowing away the $2 bettor. In his place has stepped in wagering hubs that don’t seem to mind the limited payouts provided they are afforded a large kickback in the process. One could assume that wagering hubs have something to do with the short payoffs we’ve seen, but there’s a sense that the pounding of the pools in specific races is simply solid mathematics when horses find themselves in against horses they outclass by more than fractions of seconds. I come from an era when racing secretaries called the shots in a commanding way, first at Roosevelt and Yonkers Raceway, where the “ABC” system gave czar-like control to the men at the helm. Horses were classified and moved up or down in company at the whim of a single person. The positive of this system was that there were no guarantees once a horse was classified that it would go up or down based on performance. That was left to the discretion of the racing secretary, who at times didn’t move horses up in class following a win and other times did so. Essentially horsemen had limited to no control unless they chose to put a price tag on their horses. Joe DeFrank’s arrival in 1976 ushered in the conditioned system into the northeast and with it revolutionized the sport to some degree. While DeFrank’s system let horsemen classify their own stock based on earnings, it didn’t cede absolute control to trainers or owners. Essentially DeFrank made his own restrictions on horsemen and wouldn’t provide them easy sanctuary in a particular class if it meant a short-priced winner. While horsemen had the “right” to enter a certain class they fit, DeFrank took control and may have even told a few trainers that they couldn’t go in that class if he felt it would be a worse betting race. DeFrank’s dictatorial attitude didn’t sit well with many horsemen, but at the time, as The Meadowlands rose to dominance in the sport, it was the law and they naturally had to abide. ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter Ironically, the major shift that we have seen over the last few years is more than suggestive that neither some track management groups or horsemen for that matter care one way or another how they cater to the average bettor. It has become obvious that the show must go on, but how races are structured appears more important to horsemen and as such condition sheets remain rather stagnant. In the process, horsemen can cherry-pick the time and place they wish to compete, and in the same sense, the time they enter and train the horse for public consumption. Conditioned racing, in which a set of money-winning or race-winning standards allows for entry, gives all horsemen the freedom to race horses in classes they choose as opposed to the racing secretary. It’s a system that clearly needs some major tweaking if we are ever going to have a chance to reverse the low-priced favorite trend and infuse some balanced wagering. While each racing secretary could decide to take a firmer look at their condition sheets and alter them when needed, they could solve some of the problems that help create short-priced favorites by putting hard and fast restrictions on the conditions sheet that gives all horsemen notice in advance. One of the biggest issues that I have is when a horse doesn’t leave the gate for consecutive weeks and just sits on the pylons while at best looking for fifth money. Then weeks later he drops one or two classes and wins for fun at $2.40. The track is rewarding minimal effort with the opportunity to gain an easy win against much softer company. What if that opportunity didn’t exist? What if the conditions for dropping any class included actual effort in prior races? Taking it a step further, what if a horse could only drop one class and had to draw from the outside posts thus helping to balance out a race and hopefully not go off as the prohibitive chalk? As condition sheets have become more horsemen friendly in recent years the advent of non-winners of 1, 2, 3 through 8 classes have provided us with some of the best opportunities for clever trainers and the worst outcomes for the horseplayers. That so many horsemen simply “milk” these classes and win when it is in their best interest is a major contributor to the problem. When they are racing for a piece, they go off at high odds and when they are serious, they seem to come in at $2.20. These conditions need to be revised so that horsemen can’t have an all-year window to earn purse money while rarely giving the betting public the same chance. I would limit the number of starts any horse could have within these classes, essentially kicking horses up in class for wins or money earned, with the earnings ceilings dramatically reduced from current levels. Perhaps a radical idea to help balance out individual races and make them more competitive for the bettors would be some form of distance handicap. I would reserve this condition for a specific type of horse. Essentially any horse that has raced in top class races at any track could drop more than one class only if he/she is handicapped by starting a required distance behind the field at the outset. The idea here is not to give horses that have a tremendous class edge over their rivals an equal starting point behind the gate. This scenario has proven over time to be walkover-like as outclassed horses yield to the heavy favorite and the race goes cold from there. While no one wants to kill the golden goose, it has become painfully obvious that the betting public has been virtually ignored and no adjustments have been made to hold their interest or give them better wagering options. Far too few have the “kickback” option and thus rely heavily on getting some perceived value from their wagers. This can’t happen by accident. Only the willingness of horsemen to sacrifice some of their absolute control and racing secretaries who offer more to the equation than simply filling races regardless of the imbalance.