Saturday, April 28, 2012

What does Hollywood's new tracking of jockeys during races say?

Watching a replay of yesterday's 5th at Hollywood, I noticed that the list of the four leaders as the race unfolded consisted of the jockeys, not the horses. Is the graphic usually just the #s and nothing else? I know I've never seen the jockeys be a part of it before, at any rate.

Now, I am going to complain about 99% of the changes that are instituted, but listing the horses would be more informative than listing the riders, because the riders have much less to do with the eventual outcome. Yes, not just anybody can ride a race horse, but at the professional level, the jockeys are more interchangeable than the horses.

This custom also forces one, or at least encourages one, to pay a good deal of attention to the jockeys before the race takes place. To me, again, the jockeys hold no interest separate from the horses. There is zero chance that I am going to remember who is riding a horse, and nothing else about that horse, the way I approach races now. If all you can remember about a horse is who is riding it, it's likely you don't even know what kind of a race you're watching: claiming, allowance, whatever. The fantasy world where riders are main variables outside of horses also allows the dismissal from ones mind of the kind of race that is being contested. I would love to poll fans at the races, to quiz them on what kind of a race they were watching just before the race. I think fans who grew up in the handicapping tradition would be surprised how many wouldn't be able to tell me. On the other hand, most fans would be able to give a rundown of which jockeys were contesting a particular race. So this little change with the graphics not only fits in with the precedent set by the "Jockeys" documentary, but also is a pandering change, not an intelligent one. Organizing race results in terms of jockeys is a bit like presenting football games as the matchup of the two teams' left guards. If a craze took place, and this was commonly down, that wouldn't mean that executives should encourage it.

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