Two Tweets For Integrity

A horseman feels his horse has a good chance. He has been darkening the horses form – “stiffing” in horse parlance – so he can get a juicy price. He sulks off into the shadows, gives a call to Vido and Vido places bets all over town. He’s 20-1 and tonight’s the night. It’s gonna be a big score. The public will be none the wiser.

In another part of the barn a trainer has brought his horse back from a 9^th by 22 finish. Exactly as planned and he is all smiles. He is going to cash next time. Tell Martha to grab the kids and get ready for a paid vacation.

That is the perception out there in some quarters; we all know that.  When a horse races bad it can be explained by the shady side of racing. When a rider or a harness driver is getting instructions, that secret is protected like Fort Knox. The public should not know, because we are racing, and we keep things quiet.

To anyone who hot walks, trains, grooms, drives or rides, or owns a racehorse in today’s world it is nonsense, or so small a faction of this industry it is not worth mentioning.  Now, thanks to the Internet and racetracks who are actually trying to promote integrity, there is a medium for them to get their voices heard.

Welcome the world of harness racing to Twitter.

Last month, star harness driver and $56M career winner Mark MacDonald started to use twitter to tweet before his drives what he thought of his chances.  “Expect an aggressive drive in the 4^th”, “poor drive in the 5^th, apologies” or “with the rail this horse should be good. I was boxed and had traffic trouble last time” are some examples of what Mark tweets to his horseplaying followers and does so in real time. He does it with 100% transparency, right from the paddock.

So much for the dark side of racing, huh?

Fast forward to Mike Hamilton. Mike is a TV guy who works for Woodbine.  He is finally on twitter and he is tweeting his thoughts throughout the race card. Mike is a handicapper, so a good many of posts are handicapping in real time, but sometimes we get more.

In one part of the harness paddock there is the veritable “scope vet”. Here, horse owners and trainers find out why their horse raced so poorly. Some nights, especially in allergy season, or when a sickness is going around the barns, she is a busy person. Before Twitter the results of such a scope were kept quiet and no one knew why a horse raced so bad. If in three weeks this same horse won horseplayers would scratch their head and wonder if some funny business took place.  Now, thanks to Mike, and his venture into micro-blogs, we have a person who is reporting on such things.

Last week, a mare by the name of AP’s Money Maker came dead last at 3-2. She raced quite bad. Mike was there with this:

“Just watched them scoping APs Money Maker who raced poorly in race 3. Will have more to report mid-week.” 8:21 PM May 1st via web

The trainer was a stumped as we were as bettors, so was the owner and everyone associated with the horse. But this time, the bettor knew. It was not a sinister plot; the horse was probably badly sick.

Harness racing has fallen on hard times; handles are off even more than the thoroughbreds. What they have done more quickly than the thoroughbred game is realize that the game will not last forever unless change occurs  Embracing technology to attack questions of integrity like this might tell us that the people who work in it will not let it go down without a fight.