And its dollar is not on par with the U.S., no matter what the Thoroughbred industry says

The Jockey Club has a dilemma brewing north and south of the border. It is examining whether to convert Canadian dollars to United States dollars for all racing in Canada for use in the Thoroughbred industry. It is caught between what is right and the status quo.

A second issue is the cost. To change all its programming to enable it to provide separate data for Canada, the Jockey Club would have to spend well into six figures for software development. And who should underwrite that cost? asks the Jockey Club looking across the table.

The issue is the Canadian dollar and its relative value to the U.S. dollar. Policy of the Jockey Club is to convert the purses for races and the earnings for runners for all foreign countries into U.S. dollars on a daily basis. However, that is not done for Canada.

In the Thoroughbred world, the Canadian dollar is worth 100 cents of the U.S. dollar, even though in the real world the Canadian dollar is worth about 65 cents on the dollar.

This policy means that all data pertaining to racing in North America contains inflated Canadian earnings. That is the case for past performances, charts, dollar amounts for claiming prices for horses in Canadian races, information on catalog pages, sire lists, and other statistics.

Anyone who wins a purse in Canada knows that a Canadian dollar is not on par with the U.S. dollar because he or she gets paid in Canadian dollars. While the 2000 Queen's Plate Stakes was worth $1-million, with $600,000 to the winner, Woodbine paid the winning owner about $390,000 U.S. However, the winning horse received $600,000 U.S. credits for his race record, and the sire $600,000 U.S. in earnings for sire lists. How misleading is this?

You may remember Dance Smartly, credited with $3,263,835 in earnings, as once being the all-time leading distaff earner in North America. However, Dance Smartly made 13 of her 17 starts in Canada and after converting her Canadian earnings her real total should be $2,939,058, short of Lady's Secret's then record of $3,021,325. How silly is that?

Racing has placed the Canadian dollar on par with the U.S. for decades, ever since Daily Racing Form was the official data collector for Thoroughbred racing in North America.

For a long time, this was not an issue. As recently as the 1970s, the Canadian dollar was on par with the U.S. In fact, for a number of years in the 1970s, the Canadian dollar was worth slightly more than the U.S. dollar. But that has not been the case since the end of 1976. Since then, the U.S. dollar has steadily gained in strength. By the early 1980s, the Canadian dollar had sunk to about 85 cents on the dollar and to 75 cents by the mid-1980s.

The Jockey Club database was built from information received from Daily Racing Form, although today it gets its data from its kissin' cousin, Equibase, which has maintained a similar philosophy as the Racing Form regarding Canadian purses.

A number of people within both the Jockey Club and Equibase know what is right and want to do the right thing, but the major data users lack consensus on how to address the issue.

The Society of International Thoroughbred Auctioneers-sale companies-wants to report Canadian earnings separately as it does for all countries in sale catalogs. Racing secretaries in the U.S. generally want earnings converted to enable them to figure conditions for allowance races and to know the proper claiming prices. Racetracks in the U.S. generally have indicated they do not want to convert earnings for their Equibase programs, and the Racing Form does not want to convert earnings. Thoroughbred Times wants to convert earnings (but does not believe it should pay for part of the conversion cost).

In the next several months, the Jockey Club will be putting the issue before its board. The Jockey Club, which has as one of its missions to be the worldwide data collection agency for all registries in the world, can take a big step in that direction by taking a leadership role. It should set up Canada as a separate racing country and convert earnings for those organizations and companies that want to report earnings properly.