Author: Michael Souza

Sometimes no matter how good you are, winning a year-end award is out of your control.  In this case, Lava Man, the best horse on the west coast, loses one race out of eight, all Stakes races, and isn’t even a finalist for Horse of the Year.

In what ended to be a cruel irony, horseracing took a giant step backwards yesterday as its national television coverage was reduced one hour by the network the industry entrusted to bring it to the forefront of the American public.  It wasn’t the first time and it most likely won’t be the last time, either.  Desperate for exposure, the horseracing industry as a whole was inadvertently and innocently, but soundly humiliated by ESPN programmers and their sense of priorities, as racing took a back seat to powerhouses such as exhibition baseball and college wrestling.  A sad statement of affairs, indeed.  The National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), who represents the industry, now finds itself in the unenviable position of starting its season playing catch up like a late breaking horse out of the gate.