Flatter: Big & not-so-big race days could steal ideas from TV

I don’t know if I have Olympic fever. It feels more like Olympic body aches, especially since it comes on early in the week and goes away when it is time to focus on weekend racing. I am sure it is less serious than whatever the triathletes will be diagnosed with after they swam chunky style in the Seine. Maybe I can replicate their Olympic experience by taking a dip in the Ohio River.

Play the bugles, please. No, I don’t mean that fanfare that NBC stole from ABC three decades ago. I am talking about “Call to the Post,” which I just read may have been bugled at horse races before the Civil War. I wonder if there were copyright infringement claims back then when one track ripped it off from another. Hey, maybe they could tear up each other’s sheet music the way they cut off each other’s TV signals.

Racing offers its own paean to the Olympics on Saturday. There are gold-medal events at three venues.

Adare Manor vs. Pretty Mischievous in the Grade 1 Clement L. Hirsch at Del Mar feels a bit like the U.S. vs. Australia in the swimming pool, except without the tabloid sniping that is coming from my old home in the land down under. If another filly or mare, say Scylla, pulls off the upset, it will be like Greece stunned the Yanks and Aussies.

The return to Saratoga of Bob Baffert and National Treasure in the Whitney (G1) might be like Steve Kerr or, more age appropriate, Gregg Popovich bringing the U.S. men’s basketball team into a game against the next best team in its qualifying group. Maybe National Treasure should win, but we are not talking about the 1992 Dream Team or the 2015 American Pharoah here. And yes, I know what happened to Pharoah at Saratoga.

Then there is that part of our sport that is completely different to Thoroughbred snobs like me. I admit it. The Hambletonian may be the only standardbred race I will watch all year. I used to cover it almost every year during the decade I lived in New York. There is no wider body of water to traverse than the Hudson River between Manhattan and North Jersey.

For so many of us, harness racing can be like diving or gymnastics. We may know or care little about it, but when its big day comes once a year or every four, we pretend to be experts. Especially when there is a bad call by the judges. Or stewards.

The Hambo and the Whitney will be about an hour apart on the same telecast and even the same inter-track, inter-code Pick 5. I might want to brush up on my Takters and Gingras before they run that race from that newish Meadowlands grandstand that was positioned to face the setting sun. Makes me wonder why Keeneland and Kentucky Downs did that, too. It is akin to being a visiting fan at a college football game. Let’s start the SPF bidding at 50.

Then we will have to wait about four hours from watching Clément, the racing host at the Spa, to the Clement, the big race at the junction of turf and surf.

If only racing had something like the Gold Zone, which, to let everyone in on a dirty, little secret, is available with all the other channels not just for a fee on Peacock but free of charge on the regular, less ballyhooed NBC app. Everything is there, hiding in plain, gratis sight.

Oh, wait. Racing does have the Gold Zone. It is called FanDuel TV. It came first, too, by its own three-letter name.

In the great tradition of song theft and the filching of intellectual property, there are some other TV ideas that racing might consider adopting. Sorry. I guess the word now is aggregating.

Instead of having just one caller on each race, how about two? Kind of like smooth as water Dan Hicks and lung-emptying screamer Rowdy Gaines at the swimming pool. Imagine Larry Collmus being paired with Gus Johnson.

When the skies are clouding up and threatening to open over Saratoga, get Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel to come in, refuse to be swept off balance and get everyone through the difficult storms with the confidence and swagger of a marine on leave.

I already have wondered openly here about racing’s answer to the Manningcast. Rather than the Ortiz brothers, who tend to be busy with other matters on big race days, how about pairing a couple natural nemeses? Maybe Lazarus and Hamelback. Or Repole and Gagliano. Or a Northern Californian and a Southern Californian. Those last two may need the work soon.

Think about a racing version of “Hard Knocks.” Just strap a GoPro to a HISA operative. Oh, wait. I feel like we have been there and done something like that. The pilot could come from footage gathered 4 1/2 years ago by a federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

Actually, a better way to take us inside racing would be some version of that show where that hothead shows up and screams at bartenders and wait staffs and pub owners. Instead he could go after trainers and grooms and hot walkers for having messy stalls. Call it “Barn Rescue.” Just like the other show, they can bring in producers to cook up fake conflicts and dramatic charades. Then the horsemen can cry some tears to get a repainted barn tricked out with state-of-the-art hay feeders, oat dispensers and water supplies. What happens six months later when the stable is closed and the trainer finds another line of work can show up in the fine print at the end of each episode.

It may not be a very new idea, but it keeps coming back every few years. The ultimate idea to steal might be “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” I was just talking about this Thursday while the sonorous monologues were going on during The Jockey Club round table. I can just see those silhouettes talking over the droning speakers throughout the racing industry, from panels to public meetings.

Come to think of it, how about taking “MST3K” and combine it with “Barn Rescue.” Put them together here in the bluegrass the next time the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission meets. Oh, sorry. The Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation.

Even before Tom Servo and Joel Robinson and Crow T. Robot could uncork their one liners, big John could come in and scream, “Who came up with that ----ing awful name?”

Enough of all this. Someone take me to the races. And put them in a triple box.

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