Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem for Jan. 9, 2025

A good Thursday morning to you all! Hope everyone out west is staying safe and everyone else is staying warm. I know we’ve already seen Oaklawn cancel this entire weekend, and I’m sure there will be others. 

It’s a bit chilly down here, but we have nothing to complain about as we get ready for another round of three-year-old series races here at Tampa Bay Downs, the Pasco S. and the Gasparilla S. Owen Almighty for Brian Lynch is the big name, but I was really impressed with Naughty Rascal’s effort behind Donut God last time out in the Inaugural S. here last month. So that’s where I’m leaning. 

For today’s column, I wanted to discuss a few things in racing that I’d love to see go away in 2025. Most of these are wishful thinking, but a couple I think would be easy fixes; some others, just plain won’t happen. But these are just my Thursday Thoughts, so I’m just thinking out loud. 

Get rid of the run-up! I’ve truly never understood run-ups. Why do horses need to begin being timed in full stride? There are courses like Pimlico’s six-furlong course and Gulfstream’s one-mile dirt course that don’t use any, and it works out fine. Sure it takes a little while to get used to the splits being a little faster in the second quarter than the first, but who cares. It just seems like a weird, out-of-date practice – especially when run-ups sometimes get to be hundreds of feet. It’s absurd. 

Let’s finally kill Jackpot bets! Racing is a copycat game just like most other sports. When people see something gaining popularity or just working, they copy it. But also if they see something falling out of favor, they jump off. We’ve seen a lot of tracks move away from jackpots and back to the better regular sequences. Some of the jackpots that have stayed are better than some of the others, but the ones with the high takeout and high percentage going to the jackpot are just a joke. I know a lot of people like the big mandatory payout days, but even those can be brutal. I’d rather see that money in the playing ecosystem each day as opposed to being held out of it for weeks or months then getting paid out once. 

Stop putting up horses via DQ who weren’t going to win. I’ve never taken a big stance on the Category 1 vs. Category 2 debate, but one thing I’ve seen a few times recently that always annoys me is when a horse who finishes second gets put up to the win spot because the race winner interfered with someone who finished further back. I understand disqualifying a horse who wins and interferes with the runner-up who may well have won. But elevating a horse who wasn’t going to win just seems odd. Maybe time for Category 1? 

Stop saying the word “penultimate” with such vigor. For reasons unknown to me, people just love to say this word in horse racing. It’s the penultimate day. The penultimate race. The penultimate this and that. I’ve been guilty of it before. But I swear whenever I hear people in racing say this word, they say it so excitedly. OK rant over :) 

I’d like to see supertrainers go away. I know this one’s never going to happen, but it just feels like way too many of the good horses are in the hands of too few trainers. There are so many good conditioners out there, and we’ve seen smaller barns pop up and win big races enough to know that they can train. I just worry about the day when one of our big national races is going to have like four or five trainers that make up the whole field. I don’t know if you need to do a salary-cap type thing like in sports or what. I just want to see a healthier trainer economy.  

So those are some things I’d like to see happen in 2025. There’s a little sarcasm in a few of these answers, but some real feelings behind all of them. I hope the sport can move forward in the new year!