Flatter: Plan to centralize chart calling is bad for bettors

I knew it was time to get back to work when I had a bizarre dream this week about horse racing.

No lie. I was standing in the media corral in section 327 at Churchill Downs, watching the horses on the backstretch during the Kentucky Derby. Then for some reason my gaze wandered to the infield in the middle of the far turn, where a cannon was fired. Who knows how it got past security? Maybe it was not in a clear plastic bag.

Inexplicably, the smoke from the cannon ricocheted and wafted across the backstretch from the clubhouse turn. When it cleared, all the horses had stopped. Before I could find out what happened, I woke up.

After being told the outlandish details of this astral travelogue, Churchill Downs officials had no comment. Do you blame them?

While I was away, nominally on vacation, honestly redeeming comp time, mostly dealing with doctors, the whole racing industry experienced an all-too-real nightmare.

Equibase, the gatekeeper of the one thing that is supposed to be correct and reliable and just and true about this sport, announced two weeks ago it is “in the process of creating a centralized charting center that will utilize video and other technology to ensure we produce the highest quality charts.”

And so The Jockey Club, which owns Equibase, needs to save some of the dollars on its mountain of money by removing many of the very humans who check racetrack establishment and balance it with eyewitness credibility in the very charts that we consume every day.

With the presumed exception of the biggest tracks in the country, there are very real eyes and ears and noses that will be replaced by a room full of flat screens in Lexington, Ky., presumably staffed by fewer people commanding less money.

“From the perspective of a horse-racing professional, it’s not good,” retiring West Virginia chart caller Mike Sassin wrote on X. “It will water down the information bettors use to handicap. Some information will be lost in transit.”

That is an understatement. Although Equibase said it “will continue to have chart callers in venue for years to come,” it did not say they will be in every venue. One source said the biggest tracks might be untouchable, but little tracks like Sassin’s at Charles Town look like they will have empty booths that once were the domain of chart callers. As for where the line will be drawn separating big tracks from little ones, only your bean counter knows for sure.

“In my opinion,” Sassin wrote, “The Jockey Club is purposely trying to diminish the current volume of horse-racing venues at smaller racetracks to focus more on the larger venues like Kentucky, California, New York and Florida and maybe Maryland, because the Preakness is held there.”

Be that as it may, the short-term diagnosis is that this is just another place where transparency in racing, a canard at best, will go to die.

Kyle McDoniel, who became the boss at Equibase 18 months ago, insisted that having a centralized charting center means more people will be paying attention to all racetracks rather than the typical two-person teams who are on site.

“They do a great job,” McDoniel told The Racing Biz, “but I think at the same time we’ll be a lot better if we can have multiple people looking at, you know, have multiple eyes on races.”

In truth, there will be multiple eyes on TV screens, not races. That is a very important step removed from the current practice. By staking its credibility on plausibly reliable camerawork at dozens of racetracks where pennies are thrown around like manhole covers, Equibase is walking the industry into a minefield.

Think about how many times we have watched a track feed and wondered what happened to the horse who was fractious at the gate, to the rider who was dismounted, to the runner who drifted out of view only to walk across the finish line, to the animal who broke down in mid-race or who bled afterward. Instead, we see a logo or a wide shot of trees or flagpoles.

Then there are those tracks whose cameras do not have stable tripods or operators. We all should be given Dramamine every time we have to watch the ever-loving Jerky Pete taking aim with the pan camera at Ellis Park or Turf Paradise.

This does not even take into account what happens if the video feed crashes while the race goes on. There also are those times when a question demands to be asked by someone at the track to someone else at the track. Someone else who might or might not pick up a telephone call from the 859 area code.

Equibase said its new nerve center will have access to more cameras than we see on track feeds. Mind you, this is the same Equibase that assured us its Gmax gadgetry would make all previous timing systems obsolete. How is that working out for us? Let those chiclets at the bottom of the screen be your guide, and you could be lost forever.

It has been suggested that a reasonable compromise here would be to turn race-calling into a solo craft. Rather than having someone making the calls to a booth partner taking dictation, tracks still can employ a single, solitary person to gather the information and write the charts. This also helps with the challenge of finding good, qualified professionals to take these jobs at tracks that operate only part time.

It is not an ideal solution, but it is better than this fantasy of replicating what major team sports have with their video-review centers. Equibase’s analogous claim that “what we are doing here is no different” is specious, since football and basketball and baseball and hockey have far more independent witnesses on site to try to keep them honest.

If, however, Equibase goes ahead with this scorched-earth retreat of chart calling into a video bunker, then horseplayers will be caught holding the bag again. No one will be more disadvantaged by this bottlenecking of information than bettors who make the reasonable demand to know what has been going on with the horses who are the vehicles for their money.

While we wait to be rousted out of this latest nightmare, allow me please to anticipate my critics who are sorry to see me getting back to work. Let it be known that Ronald Allen Flatter is a scoundrel. His site should be run off the web. A committee should be formed to boycott him. You may, if you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of a thousand.

I think I have heard that before. I will wait for the chart to find out where.

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.