Thoro-Graph

How did we get hooked on this sport? We all have stories about how our love affair developed and blossomed. The TDN reached out to numerous notable people in the industry to get their stories to find out how they got hooked and stayed hooked on the sport. Rocco Landesman, Broadway Producer and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts I've always been an excitement junkie. I love the risk, love the adrenaline you get from that. I've had a career in the Broadway Theater and there's nothing...

How did we get hooked on this sport? We all have stories about how our love affair developed and blossomed. The TDN will be reaching out to numerous notable people in the industry to get their stories to find out how they got hooked and stayed hooked on the sport. Dave Johnson, Racecaller & Radio Host My mom and dad and then my grandparents on both sides, they all went to Fairmount Park just for fun when I was growing up in St. Louis. Mostly it was just for holidays...

Keeneland has cataloged 277 horses to the November Horses of Racing Age Sale, set to be held on Nov. 17, the day after the conclusion of the November Breeding Stock Sale, the auction company announced on Tuesday. The catalog features Daily Racing Form and Equibase past performances along with Thoro-graph and Ragozin sheets, race replays and more. The single-session sale consists of 66 2-year-olds, 126 3-year-olds and 85 older horses by top stallions such as Arrogate, Candy Ride (ARG), Constitution, Curlin, Good Magic, Gun Runner, Into Mischief, Justify, Munnings, Not...

There have been several stories recently in the TDN about Computer Assisted Wagering (CAW), and many of them have contained accurate and useful information. But what those articles have failed to do is convey what CAW really is and does, why it matters, and most of all, how dire and urgent the situation they have created is. Hence this letter. 1-First, the basics. Betting handle is the lifeblood of our industry. It directly funds purses, creates all the jobs in our business, and indirectly funds the commercial bloodstock industry—no (or...

A business partnership between performance-figure provider Thoro-Graph, Inc., and the New York Racing Association (NYRA) that had been billed as a "win-win-win" deal for the two parties and advance-deposit wagering (ADW) customers when it first launched in 2017 has gone sour, resulting in a lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court. According to the civil complaint, Thoro-Graph is suing both NYRA and its NYRA Bets ADW platform over the alleged non-payment of at least $333,000 that Thoro-Graph believes is its rightful cut for incentivizing horseplayers to become NYRA Bets...

Sergio Leone's 1966 masterpiece, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," was the last and best of a trilogy of Leone spaghetti westerns that upended the traditional genre. Before Leone and other Italian directors like Sergio Corbucci set about redefining the Old West in Europe, traditional domestic westerns featured clean-cut leads like John Wayne, Alan Ladd, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart in films by directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks that clearly delineated the good from the bad and ugly. Not so Leone, who made the genre...

Thoro-Graph, which has been computing speed figures for 35 years, gave Flightline (Tapit) a negative 8 1/2 for his win in the GI TVG Pacific Classic, the fastest number it has ever assigned to a horse. The previous record was a negative 8, the figure Frosted (Tapit) ran when winning the 2016 GI Metropolitan H. Flightline was given a 126 Beyer figure. That is the second fastest Beyer number ever, trailing only the 128 that team gave to Ghostzapper (Awesome Again) when he won the GIII Philip H. Iselin H....

When it comes to figuring out which trainers are taking an illegal edge it usually comes down to guesswork and innuendo, hardly the best way to police the sport. That's why The Jockey Club put Jerry Brown of Thoro-Graph and consultants McKinsey & Company to work and asked them to formulate an algorithm that uses speed-figure data to identify trainers that may be using performance-enhancing drugs. The program, which was announced at the recent Jockey Club Round Table, is being made available to tracks through The Jockey Club's In Compass...

First off, let me say that I have been fighting against the use of performance enhancers in racing longer than anyone reading this. When The Jockey Club took up the fight in 2008 I was one of the people they talked to, for that very reason. So, I'm not very happy being told that if I oppose a misguided piece of legislation, I'm somehow pro-drug (link to Bill Finley's Mar. 17 Op Ed). I disagree with Victoria Keith's Op-Ed (link) on one point-- horseplayers, not owners, fund purses, which ultimately...

Editor's Note: Tuesday, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission will hold a hearing before the Joint Committee on Licensing, Occupations, regarding the proposed amended regulation which would partially ban the use of Lasix at Kentucky tracks. The proposed ban would include all 2-year-old horses racing in Kentucky this year and be extended to stakes races in 2021, and is being advanced by a national coalition of racetracks and other racing organizations that includes all of Kentucky's racetrack operators. On June 1, Franklin (Ky) Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate denied a motion...