Comments on: The Thoroughbred Manifesto: a Proposal

By: By the Wayside « The Thoroughbred Brief

By the Wayside « The Thoroughbred Brief — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:56:51 +0000

[...] have repeatedly mentioned my belief that the Thoroughbred industry needs to work more closely with the Thoroughbred world; I [...]

By: Kerry O'Neill

Kerry O'Neill — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:18:20 +0000

Alex: again, I’m wary of taxes as a solution, simply because they can be hard to implement. Will it be a state tax or a federal tax? Either way it implicates government regulation, which I don’t think should be involved in this kind of an endeavor. Now, a raised fee for registration would be easier to do. As Moelis said, if you can’t afford an extra $50 (I’d even say more than that), you shouldn’t own a race horse.

Kat: Thanks for the positive feedback; I know that a lot of what I was saying is simply what the sport horse world is thinking. I don’t understand why we all can’t view the TB as a whole, an animal with a useful life of 20+ years who can transition from one sport to another. And I can’t see any negatives from such an alliance or just increased communication. There are indeed many people who would be willing to take an OTTB, if they could find one without a bad knee, a huge bow, etc. etc.

What I would LOVE to see is people willing to sell into the sport horse industry before a horse starts, if it’s clear the horse is not interested in racing . Right now there’s no real incentive to do that. It’s sad that eventers, for instance, import many, many TB’s from New Zealand. I think that speaks volumes about the durability of our TB’s.

By: kat

kat — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:45:52 +0000

You wrote “my words”… EXCELLENT article.
And I think this is a big part of the equation: “To whatever extent breeding for speed has resulted in a more fragile horse, it has also hurt the market for the off-the-track Thoroughbred; the general perception, correct or not, is that Thoroughbreds tend to be too fragile for a long career. And let me put this out there – a complete steroid ban would go a long way to making sport horse owners more willing to invest in an off-the-track Thoroughbred.”

The racing industry needs to protect the athletes on the track – so that they can leave SOUND and have the chance of a second career!
There are plenty of us out here, who are ready and willing to retrain OTTBs, it just seems to be hard to find any SOUND ones these days…

By: alex

alex — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:18:54 +0000

in the essay i wrote on unwanted horses and horse slaughter:

http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/features/horseslaughter-152.shtml

i proposed similarly re: a sales tax as well as a tax on the breeder.

very interesting read.

By: Kerry O'Neill

Kerry O'Neill — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:38:39 +0000

The sales tax could be tricky to convince owners to do, but I like the concept of subsidizing the later sale price.
I also really do like using the term “superfund” for the Moelis idea, mainly because of the connection to the CERCLA Superfund, which is used to clean up disasters when the people who caused those disasters won’t clean them up themselves.

By: winston

winston — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:55:00 +0000

Kerry,

Great piece. I hate to pile on the owner, being one, especially after Mr. Zorn’s piece but I think that these incentives might have to come from the owners themselves.

Maybe a sort of sales tax, every time a horse is sold, whether through the claim box or privately, a percentage, based on sale price, would be tacked on and allocated towards this program. This would mean that more expensive sales would subsidize the cheaper ones but it has to come from somewhere.

Thanks for the shout out. Again, great piece.