Flatter: After Gate Gate at Saratoga, NYRA must be open

Mistakes happen. The noun I really wanted use first was more florid and singular, but I suspect I have begun to make my point.

They seem more prominent now. Saratoga coming up about a football field short of the full distance in Saturday’s finale has become a scandalous meme the way jockey Luan Machado did last year when he misjudged the wire not once but twice.

Wrong distance call: NYRA apologizes for gate gaffe.

If the starting stalls were parked in the wrong place on the track last weekend, should we call this scandal Gate Gate? Asking for a friend.

There was the usual response. Fire them all. In the 21st century that is the demand that has replaced boil them in oil, especially with the spreading desire to wean our punitive violence from fossil fuels. Pitchforks and torches still will be distributed at the Spa verandas.

I am curious, though, the same way I was nine years ago. That was when it took three preseason games for anyone to notice Colin Kaepernick was taking a knee during the national anthem.

The live New York Racing Association telecast from Saratoga was going off the air Saturday on Fox or FS1 or FS2 or wherever it had bounced when 94% of the 12th race was run. Before, during and after, there was no mention of the error that looks so obvious now. At least nothing was said before “Ridiculousness” came on for the billionth time. Sorry. Wrong channel.

It was 15 minutes before Daily Racing Form’s David Grening went on X to point out the screw-up. That means the stewards and gate crew and TV crew completely missed it. So, too, did owners, trainers, jockeys, bettors and thousands of other spectators who were at Saratoga that day.

If you see something, say something. Apparently no one saw anything.

It feels like racetrack staging is experiencing more errors than the Boston Red Sox. Kentucky Downs went through a dose of them in 2020 and 2021. Pimlico had a couple this spring. Mechanical error. Electrical error. Human error. Whatever the official scorer at Equibase calls them, they are not forgiven and forgotten as much in racing, because they are bigger flashpoints separating winning tickets from trashed betting slips. Every one of these gaffes ruptures horseplayers’ ears like “behind the bag, it gets through Buckner.”

It could be that these mistakes have happened as often in the past as they do now, but they get more attention because of omnipresent cameras, the immediacy of digital media and even the anonymity of uncensored criticism.

I would suggest there is another factor at play. Money. Specifically the dollars that are not spent anymore to fill staffs anywhere. Every time a mistake like Saturday’s happens, the attendant racing jurisdiction promises a robust investigation, a thorough review of protocols, interviews with the parties involved and apologies to stakeholders and bettors. If only all those could be redeemed at the betting windows.

This is not to question the sincerity of these efforts. While NYRA has been a convenient, faceless and proper target of bettors’ anger, the people who screwed up presumably feel worse about this than anyone.

If NYRA owes anything other than refunds, it is to reveal the names and faces of whodunnit. Absent from the boilerplate apologies, both written and video, was whether anyone was suspended or fired for this latest in a series of wrong-distance slumbers. Two of anything in 14 months and three in seven years might not seem like a lot unless we are talking about basement floods, fender benders and blown gate placements involving the same people over and over again.

Throw in the messy adjudication of the Zulu Kingdom disqualification in the Hall of Fame Stakes, and the reins of forgiveness have to be pulled tight on NYRA.

If this whole situation does not scream out loud for more transparency from the stewards, it is hard to imagine what would. NYRA has been praised for expanding its video presentations of stewards’ reviews, although the one that came a full 24 hours after Saturday’s mess looked more like a hostage situation. Two stewards and a NYRA executive might as well have been stunt doubles for Kelly Ripa right before her 2016 TV split from Michael Strahan. They could have repeated what she said that day. “I am fairly certain that there are trained professional snipers with tranquilizer darts in case I drift too far off message.”

Mine is a one-string banjo when it comes to stewards’ accountability. Their work is much more open in other countries. Twenty years ago I worked in Australia, where every inquiry and objection is shown and heard live at the track and on the video feed. Since that practice has not caused Earth to careen out of its circumsolar orbit, there is zero reason the same thing should not start yesterday in the U.S.

That is just one step NYRA ought to take. To prevent a repeat of what happened Saturday and in 2024 and in 2018, there should be bright green lights on a rail to mark the proper starting points of next races. They could be switched on by stewards from their booth the same way clockers activate alarms from the press box when a horse gets loose in the morning.

But back to that money thing, which translates to mistake prevention becoming a bigger challenge in the 21st century. It seems like every business is trying to stretch its dollars. Fewer and fewer people are called on to multitask more and more roles within their jobs. We all get spread too thin, and the quality of work suffers.

It happens here on this website. That screw-up in the Alabama Stakes preview last weekend that said the race would be run on turf? That was mine. No excuse. It happened. If there is a safe bet going forward, it is that I and we have not made the last of our mistakes.

Hopefully, I and we don’t cost anyone any money. NYRA should embrace that hope, but with mispositioned gates, controversial DQ decisions and even those times when races are taken off the turf too late to adjust multi-race wagers, that gilded horse has left the barn.

Since it emerged from bankruptcy nearly 17 years ago, NYRA stopped being a quasi-government agency. It is, however, a de-facto public trust which is on the hook for a $455 million loan from New York state taxpayers to rebuild Belmont Park.

Whether anyone should have been suspended or fired for Gate Gate really depends on how many mistakes he or she has made. Someone batting .995 is easier to forgive than a repeat offender. And yes, I am sure there is some labor law that prevents a laying bare of anyone’s work record.

At least we should know the active roster of “the many racing officials,” as one steward put it, who are responsible for knowing how long the next race should be run. Leave out the names of the suspended and fired. We can take the process of elimination from there. And the newly “implemented measures,” as a spokesperson called them, should be outlined publicly in complete, step-by-step detail.

Hopefully we will not live to see the day when a mistake like this happens again. But it will. Because never is a long, damn time.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.