Grading stakes: Now, that's entertainment

Nobel Prize winning novelist V. S. Naipaul begins “A Bend in the River” by saying, “The world is what it is.” And Bill Parcells, along with many others who perhaps don’t even realize they’re simplifying Naipaul, has frequently and famously said, “It is what it is.”

Well, horse racing takes a more modern view: It isn’t what it is. The Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, for example, which, oddly enough, has never been run at a mile on the dirt, isn’t a Grade I race, even though it is a Grade I race. See? And the Arkansas Derby isn’t a Grade II either, although it is.

The confusion is the result of a rash. The sport suddenly has broken out in a rash of Roman numerals, with 488 graded stakes for 2009, seven more than this year. In an annual event that’s starting to become as disturbingly absurd as the Darwin Awards (by the way, did you hear about the priest in Brazil who attached himself to 41 helium balloons and floated out to sea?), the American Graded Stakes Committee on Tuesday announced its grading of stakes for next year.

I assume some people still care about the grades, but it’s hard to know why since the grading becomes increasingly ludicrous each year. It isn’t what it is. (By the way, did you hear about the guy in Florida who took a joyride in a shopping cart – while holding on to an SUV?)

For next year, there will be five more Grade I races. (Six were upgraded from Grade II and only one downgraded for a net increase of five numeros unos.) Now, just ponder that development for a moment. Do you think the racing has been so good and the horses so outstanding in recent years that the only way to reflect this pandemic greatness is to add and then add some more and just keep adding (for several consecutive years) Roman numerals until the stakes calendar looks like a bedizened hussy. (By the way, did you hear about the guy in Croatia who cleaned out his chimney with a hand grenade?)

The problem is the process. (Actually, the process is only the main problem, if you overlook for a moment the very real problem that most of the upgrades happen to be at racetracks well represented on the American Graded Stakes Committee and on its committee of racing officials who rate the stakes. Del Mar’s Thomas Robbins is on both, for example, and Del Mar, just coincidentally, will have two stakes upgraded to Grade I.) To start, the process uses the number of graded stakes winners in a field as a major statistical consideration. And, well, that’s simply illogical. It's essentially a tautology. It begs the question: It’s like saying, These are major stakes horses because these are major stakes horses. And since there are more graded stakes every year, there are more graded stakes winners running in stakes every year, and so by this method the AGSC grades more and more stakes every year, and racing just keeps getting better and better and better and – but it isn’t what it is.

Andy Schweigardt, secretary of the AGSC, explained in a teleconference Tuesday that when considering a race’s grading the committee looks at five years. Or maybe two years.

And so the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, also known as the Ironic Mile, will be a Grade I event next year, for its third running, along with the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint. But the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf will be only a Grade II, all of which is nearly as amusing as races calling themselves “The World Thoroughbred Championships” even though they don’t really attract horses from throughout the world or, in some cases, have any championship correlation or implication. It isn’t what it is. (By the way, did you hear about the guy at the Belgrade Zoo who jumped into the bears’ cage to offer one of the animals a beer?)

And it just gets funnier. The stated purpose of the AGSC isn’t to limit the field for the Kentucky Derby or fill empty heads with Roman numerals or dress out a bedizened hussy or even provide annual entertainment; no, the purpose is to “maintain the integrity of the sales catalogue.” Now,  for the most part, the horses racing in major stakes in 2009 won’t have any offspring at the sales until at least 2012. Are those the sales catalogues whose integrity desperately needs protecting?

If so, what’s the hurry? Why grade the 2009 stakes in 2008? Doesn’t it make more sense – if the purpose is really to maintain any integrity at all -- to grade races after they’ve been run, after you know who’s in the field and after you’ve been able to evaluate the horses in the context of their accomplishments?

“It’s done this way,” Schweigardt said, “so there’s some certainty.”

Ok, but doesn’t everybody in horse racing know that in this game "Certainty" is another name for the Easter Bunny? Still, the AGSC could provide some modicum of certainty. It could assign minimum grades --  most of them II or III, with only those races that tradition recognizes as unimpeachably major and historically significant getting a Grade I – until the end of the year. And then couldn't the AGSC go back, evaluate and assign higher grades where the quality insists on such status? For the integrity of the grades, for accuracy, shouldn’t races be graded after they’ve been run? But, of course, that wouldn't work because it isn't what it is. (By the way, did you hear about the guy who crashed his snowmobile into the side of a mountain while chasing a jackrabbit?)  

Comments

[Jessica]

One thing I found odd was that while the BC Juvenile Turf became a G2, the BC Juvenile Turf Fillies remained ungraded. I don't see enough difference in the quality of the fields over the past two years to warrant to that discrepancy.

[Jessica]

Never mind earlier comment -- just realized Juv Turf Fillies was added in 2008, not 2007. Next year, then, it'll be up for grading.

[rd]

Do the Beulah Twins get a vote?

[Kevin]

It's all about the breeders. Check the ads in the Blood Horse. The more graded races the more horses that can be marketed as "graded stakes winners" etc. It is a total fraud that hopefully will shake itself out in the future. I agree with you 100% that the grades should be assigned after the race is run.

[Kevin]

It's all about the breeders. Check the ads in the Blood Horse. The more graded races the more horses that can be marketed as "graded stakes winners" etc. It is a total fraud that hopefully will shake itself out in the future. I agree with you 100% that the grades should be assigned after the race is run.