Flatter: Wonders of foal crops, Thoroughbreds & Mike Repole

Lexington, Ky.

I wax lyrically and fondly about the drive between my home in Louisville and the dreamland that is Keeneland. When I think of frequent commutes I have had in my life, only the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut comes close to matching the horse country of highway 60.

It is no secret that at the zenith of my being, I traveled a lot. Not like those YouTubers Kara and Nate, who are on their second hundred countries. But I have set foot in about two dozen nations and even lived on another continent for three years. For a while I carried the expanded passport.

Three particular natural wonders are in my collection of visits and memories. One of them, the Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire, is gone. It came crumbling down from Cannon Mountain 21 years ago, exposing the chains and steel rods that were used for decades in a desperate attempt to hold it in place.

The second is the Twelve Apostles. Was. Those are rock formations just off the coast of Australia in the Southern Ocean. Actually, there were nine limestone pillars that were dubbed with the biblical monicker to attract tourists. There are eight left after one of them collapsed in 2005, just days after a friend and I visited them. I blame him.

The third is the Thoroughbred racehorse. They have been there for me on six continents. Damned if I never get to the McMurdo Cup in Antarctica. I have seen the finest equine breed in all its glory far and wide, female and male, young and old, fast and slow, emphasis on fast when I adore them, slow when I bet them.

This wandering travelogue is brought to you by Keeneland, where another opening day arrives on what promises to be a perfect Friday. And by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, pioneers of historic horse racing, those machines that take a little and give back a lot. And by Mike Repole, the horse owner and self-proclaimed racing commissioner whose 3,900-character post on X was worth the pause in my press-box toils Thursday afternoon.

And so I have found a new way to play what recently has become my one-string banjo. Yes, like an earworm, the latest report on the foal crop is stuck in my head even as it erodes as steadily as the late mountain man and the remaining apostles. Is it the foal crop or my head that is eroding? It really does not matter at this point.

Well, in one case, it actually does. Pardon me for obsessing about the equine population implosion. Someone has to. And thank goodness I am not alone, even if it feels like there are few meaningful voices who can be heard from the floor of this deepening abyss.

The Jockey Club told us this week the number of Thoroughbreds born in North America last year would total 18,000, the lowest it has been in 60 years. That is down 65 percent from its peak of 51,296 in 1986. It used be that we produced two racehorses for every one person who lives in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Now there are half again as many people there as new foals across this great land of ours.

The state-by-state breakout had not yet been posted, but if recent trends hold, this archipelago of Keeneland and Churchill and Turfway and Ellis and Kentucky Downs will continue to create a bigger share of the racehorses. The horse population in the commonwealth has dropped to fewer than 8,000 new foals per year, but where it once bred only 1 of 5 horses in the country, now it is about 2 of 5.

“Legislators have done an awesome job to help make the sport more prosperous for Kentucky,” Repole said, no doubt seeing the generous purses brought on by the incentives of governmental fiats. “But I don’t think they thought about the effect that would have on the sport nationally. The success of Kentucky is hurting outside tracks, outside breeders, outside owners across the board. When these states, breeders, owners, trainers and horseplayers eventually give up on racing, Kentucky racing and breeding will flounder.”

As much as this smacks of pouring rain on a parade of success, he is right. At this rate Horse Racing Nation will become Horse Racing State.

If there was anything coming within miles of being good news in this week’s Jockey Club report, it was that the foal crop shrunk only 1.1 percent from 2022, its smallest decline since 2015, the only year in the last 18 that it actually rose a smidge. But really, that is like standing in a flood and seeing the rain let up just a little.

“Within 5-10 years, as the foal crop continues to drop 3-5 percent a year,” Repole wrote, “more tracks will close, more owners will have dispersal sales, more breeders and trainers will leave the game, more horseplayers will bet on other sports.”

Feel free to quibble over the percentage points. I believe Nero’s fiddle is available. And while I am at it, for those who insist on counting F bombs, there was one in Repole’s post. Yeah, and Kendall Jenner is too tall, and Patrick Dempsey is too old.

“Not a single mention of betting, (computer-assisted wagering) and how the sport isn’t competitive vs. other forms of gambling because of oppressive takeout?” one Xweep wrote in response late Thursday afternoon. “All of these other issues won’t matter if you don’t fix wagering.”

Really? So if we run out of horses, that will not matter? At the current rate, it will be about 2040 when the foal crop reaches zero. By then I will need someone to towel off the creamed corn and tapioca from my face, but my pension money says Repole will be drawing more meaningful breath while fending off social-media responses from AI-generated burners.

There was another case in point Thursday afternoon. Santa Anita drew its Sunday card, and it could not fill the Grade 3 Tokyo City Cup. With only three entries, it will not be run this year, and it will not be brought back as an extra.

Repole called for “a new and improved Jockey Club” that is more diverse, a Breeders’ Cup that needs “to become bigger leaders with a bigger vision nationally than just a two-day event” and “better policing of breeders” whose “concern for racing is minimal.”

Specific solutions are not easy, and just because Repole did not lay down white footprints on the concrete does not mean we should stop looking for a way out from this freefall.

Long ago in my Northern California hometown that used to have fewer people than the nation had racehorses, there was a joke going around about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. In an annual experiment, a scientist set up separate rooms for each.

After leaving them alone for about a half-hour, doors opened, and dump trucks were backed in to pour a load of horse manure into each room.

While the pessimist sat and brooded, the optimist went headfirst into the manure, digging away with a fervor that startled the scientist.

After about a half-hour, each person was summoned to answer questions.

“Why didn’t you do anything?” the scientist asked the pessimist.

“I was angry, because I was certain no one was going to do anything about that nasty stench.”

Then the scientist said to the optimist, “I’ve never seen anyone like you. Why were you diving in and digging around so furiously?”

“Well,” the optimist said, “I figured that somewhere in all this manure, there had to be a horse.”

It won’t be long now before the scientist runs out of horse sh …

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.