The Week in Review: With Eclipse Ballots Mailed Out in Mid-December, Was Taiba at Disadvantage?

Eclipse Award ballots were sent out electronically to voters on Dec. 12, with 19 days remaining on the calendar in 2022. That's how it's done. The ballot always lands in your in-box with a few weeks to go in the year.

In a normal year, that's not a problem.  Come mid-December there are only a handful of major races left on the calendar and most Eclipse races have been wrapped up by then.

But that wasn't the case in 2022. The GI Runhappy Malibu S. at Santa Anita turned into a race that voters had to pay attention to. It included Taiba (Gun Runner) and a win by him in the Dec. 26 race was something a conscientious voter had to consider before casting his or her vote.

Taiba won the Malibu, giving him three Grade I wins on the year and two more than his main competition for the 3-year-old championship, Epicenter (Not This Time). Prepared to vote for Epicenter, I changed my mind after the Malibu and voted for Taiba.

I did the right thing–I waited. But did everybody? And are there voters out there who would have voted for Taiba and not Epicenter had they waited. Might this cost Taiba the Eclipse Award?

This is a problem, but it's one that is completely avoidable.

When you receive your ballot, the subject of the late-year races at Santa Anita is addressed.

“It is strongly encouraged that you consider waiting to vote until after the conclusion of the Grade I races Dec. 26 at Santa Anita Park, which are the Malibu S., the La Brea S. and the American Oaks,” voters are told. Votes can be received as late as Jan. 3.

All that helps, buy why give voters and option to cast their ballots before the year is over?

According to publicist Jim Gluckson, it's not yet known how many people voted in 2022 before the Malibu. In 2021, 13 votes came in before the Dec. 26 races at Santa Anita. In 2020, it was only seven.

That's good news and shows that people are being careful, but even seven votes or 13 votes is seven or 13 too many when you consider how close the Epicenter-Taiba vote is likely to be. The fix is obvious. Do not accept any votes until Jan. 1 and then give voters an extra five or six days beyond Jan. 3 to get their votes in. What's the hurry? Get it right.

Todd Vs. Chad

In the same column where I threw my support behind Taiba for the 3-year-old championship, I wrote that Todd Pletcher was the “obvious” choice for the Eclipse Award for leading trainer. Steve Laymon, the co-owner of GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint winner and Chad Brown-trainee Goodnight Olive (Ghostzapper), emailed to say he thought that Pletcher was anything but a no-brainer for the award and that Brown deserved consideration. He's right.

In several relevant categories, Brown's numbers are better than Pletcher's. He had more winners (244-223), more stakes winners (51-36) and more Grade I winners (18-17). Brown's stable had earnings of $31,057,362, while Pletcher bankrolled $30,482,937. Brown won with 26% of his starters, while Pletcher won with 22%.

Nonetheless, I still feel Pletcher deserves the title, based largely on the fact that he will have trained three champions in 2022 in Nest (Curlin), Malathaat (Curlin) and Forte (Violence). That's a phenomenal, Eclipse Award-worthy feat. Goodnight Olive will be the champion and a Brown-trained horse may win in the filly and mare turf category. At best, he can get two. Pletcher also deserves a lot of points for finishing one-two in the GI Belmont S.

Two great trainers and two great years. But the edge goes to Pletcher.

Has Gmax Fixed All the Bugs?

It was announced last week that Trakus, which debuted in 2006, is shutting down. The company that operated the timing and tracking system revealed that it was losing money and that the time had come to pull the plug. Trakus went a long way toward bringing the timing of races out of the dark ages and it will be missed.

But perhaps the biggest issue is that, with Trakus no longer an option, more and more tracks will convert to Gmax. Gmax is the timing system that is operated by Equibase, a subsidiary of The Jockey Club, and competed with Trakus for business. That could be a problem.

Since Gmax came on the scene in 2018, it has been plagued by problems and there have been numerous instances at several tracks where the final times of races were inaccurate. In a sport where bettors rely heavily on how fast races were run and speed figures that is unacceptable. Worse yet, it was inconceivable that in 2022 and with all the technology out there, horse racing couldn't figure out a way to accurately time its races.

Fortunately, it appears that Equibase has figured out how to solve what had been the most pressing issue, getting the times right when it comes to the final time of a race. Randy Moss, whose many duties in the industry include his work with the Beyer speed figure team, has been an outspoken critic of Gmax and has pressed The Jockey Club to fix what has been broken. Moss said that the Gmax timing system now includes a wireless beam that is used in conjunction with the GPS technology to record the final times. The new system is working, and Moss said he no longer finds any serious problems when it comes to getting the final times of the races right at Gmax tracks.

However, according to Moss, The Jockey Club has yet to address the issue of fractional times. He says that inaccuracies in this area are still a frequent problem.

“We've seen many races where the fractions are off by two-fifths or three-fifths of a second,” he said. “There is a difference between :21.80 and :22.15. To handicappers, that's a big difference. Some fractions are reasonably accurate and it varies from race to race. But it is a problem.”

Moss said that the reported fractions in the 2021 GI Breeders' Cup Distaff and the GI Breeders' Cup Classic, run at Del Mar and timed with Gmax, were not correct.

“At Del Mar for the Breeders' Cup, they had converted to the hybrid beams, so the final times were good,” he said. “At the same time, some of the fractional times were not. Remember how incredibly fast the fractions were for the Distaff? They were off by two to three-fifths of a second. The pace was still extremely fast, but it wasn't as fast as the posted times. The same thing with the Classic. People were wondering how Knicks Go could run that fast and still hang on. He didn't run as fast as the fractional times that were posted.”

Moss said he has been told that The Jockey Club is aware of the problem and is experimenting with using wireless beams to record fractional times. That would be a needed step in the right direction and can't happen soon enough.