Hi Headpole,
I can't believe you still have that nickname after all these years. LOL! I had to sign up to this forum as I wanted to say Hi to you after reading your comments on Casey and Phil and tell you that you are bang on. And I commend you for writing what you did. I don't follow harness racing much anymore and got out of it in the mid 80's after I put Equi-Block together and then LaKOTA for humans. I just got sick and tired of all the needles, EPO, ATCH, baking soda, flucort, prednisolone, steroids, and all the other BS that was needed in order to play the game SUCCESSFULLY. It sucked ass. Having grown up around the hallowed Hollywood Park harness racing culture of the late 60's and early 70's it was a tragedy to watch the sport descend into something that didn't require anyone to be a horseman anymore. That's why my old man, Eddy Stewart, retired. And my old man was a great, highly respected, "old time" harness horseman. He didn't believe in dope (although he knew some of it worked). You know this yourself, as you were in our shed row, in our barn we fed our horses well, cared for them even better, trained them as individuals, and they lasted (raced) a long time. I can remember very few of them breaking down or getting serious, career ending injuries. We were always one of the top stables in Western Canada because of our program, which truly did center on nutrition, training and shoeing. My old man was not a drug guy, he HATED that crap. I'm sure that Joe O'Brien and the likes of him and my old man, back in that era, hated it, too. If our vet bill was $100 for the month my dad would blow a fuse. As you know, Coleman's stable was on the other side of us at Fraser Downs, and Phil used to come around the corner and watch how we fed our horses, which was probably the best in western Canada, maybe the best in the sport. And, you're right, Phil barely won a race (but he was a nice guy, that much I will say about him). In this day and age when people consistently remain at the top of the game, year after year after year (especially when they ARE NOT actually training the horse), there is ALWAYS something else at play that goes a lot deeper than one's "training abilities" - AND THAT'S A FACT. And there is not a single person in the sport of harness racing that can BS me because I grew up in this game. I know it intimately. This sport began to die when doping - and race fixing - became prevalent. That's also a fact. To prop up the purse money with slot machines and casino revenues is also BS. If a product can't stand on it's own two feet and needs another product to support it then it's time to "turn that product out to pasture", it's as simple as that. The world changes. Those who can't change with it end up going down with that dying thing. For horsemen to blame the demise of horse racing on casinos is BS, too. The US and Canada are democratic countries where people are free to play any kind of games of chance that they want. Most choose to stay away from those games where a human element is at play (i.e - horse racing and trying to figure out if the horse has some goodies in him tonight). If people prefer to play slots, cards, dice, roulette over horse racing, then that's their prerogative, and their rightful choice to do so. I know many, many horsemen, and so does everyone else on here, who prefer to play those games over betting on horses, too. The point is, is that if the sport can't stand on it's own two feet, SUPPORTED BY IT'S OWN GAMBLING REVENUES, then maybe it's time for horse racing to pass into history (which is actually what it's doing - and has been trying to do - for two decades. However, it's been kept on life support BY CASINOS). And when it finally does give up the ghost, standardbred and thoroughbred horsemen will have no one but themselves to blame for allowing the drug game that began in the late 70's to proliferate - and eventually eliminate - the sport of horse racing. The general public, especially todays young people, don't tolerate cheating in sports and they are ESPECIALLY agaisnt the doping of animals and animals being subjected to that for the purpose of making money for someone. It's only a matter of time before horse racing reverts back to a hobby that people do at country fairs because the glory days of yesteryear aren't coming back - EVER.
Rick Stewart
