Racing needs to rethink its approach on several fronts

For many people, autumn is a time of renewal and reflection. School is back in session, and patterns of life resume after the summer holidays. In the spirit of the season, I am offering the folks at the National Thoroughbred Racing Association/ Breeders' Cup Ltd. some suggested topics for reflection and correction.

Timing is everything, part 1. The NTRA has again scheduled the Eclipse Awards for mid-February in 2002. When will they learn that February 18 is too late because by then nobody cares about last year's winners? The fact that the ceremony takes place two days after the Fountain of Youth Stakes (G1) at Gulfstream Park, when the new Triple Crown season is already under way, should speak for itself.

To outside observers, the timing of the event might seem like an excuse for the big boys of the sport to go down to Florida and play golf. Suggestion: The National Football League usually leaves a weekend free in January, between the conference championships and the Super Bowl. Nothing else is going on in sports. Take advantage of it, and treat the Eclipse Awards like a national sports event rather than a private country-club banquet.

Timing is everything, part 2. The Breeders' Cup points leaders and the NTRA media poll published in trade magazines do not include results of the recent weekend stakes races. It is flat-out embarrassing for the people running the sport to be a week late with information. No wonder the general media does not take racing seriously. Suggestion: The NTRA should have someone working on the weekends to update the statistics and get them out in a timely manner, not only for the trade publications but for Sunday and Monday newspapers (remember them?).

Please decide who your target audience is. The first-season NTRA ads with Lori Petty were fabulous-hip, stylish, and designed to appeal to young professional women, who would be sure to bring their dates to the track. The ads were quashed by the big boys of the sport, who didn't get them. (Note to big boys: That was the point. They weren't for you.)

The NTRA ads lost their focus after that. The organization gave us the awful Rip Torn ads, the worse beer-buddy ads, and the geeky "Shout" ads. The ABBA music this year was great, but the leftover video from the geek ads was dreck. Suggestion: Either get a new ad agency or challenge it to come up with something that is the equal of the Lori Petty campaign. Try focus groups of young professionals, and stop talking to yourselves.

Please decide who your stars are. The recent retirement of Point Given should give you a hint. Fox Sports, in its brief but wonderful foray into televised racing, figured out from the get-go that the jockeys are the stars and played up the rivalries from the opening sequences of the shows. Riders are-dare we say it?-the NASCAR drivers of our sport. Do you wonder why "NASCAR on Fox" has replaced "NTRA Racing on Fox"? Suggestion: Utilize the jockeys, promote them, allow them to be accessible to the public, and run charity events around them.

Remember that racing, like politics, is local. The generic TV ads from Anytrack USA, of horses rounding the turn or coming to the finish line, do not do the job. The greatest racetrack ad I've yet seen is this year's Arlington Park spot. The fixed shot, in grainy black and white, depicts the quintessential Chicago urban scene, with heavy traffic in the Loop under the ubiquitous elevated railroad tracks. The thundering hooves start off softly in the distance and get louder; the horses fly by, superimposed in color on the elevated tracks, and then the sound fades out. Simply and uniquely Chicago (except for those equally ubiquitous twin spires in the logo). Suggestion: Watch Arlington's ad and learn.

Remember that emotions, unlike politics, are universal. When baseball resumed in the aftermath of September 11's tragedy, the Cincinnati Reds baseball team management handed out American flags to everyone at Cinergy Field for the Reds-Cubs game. And the South Side Chicago crowd cheered the Yankees, for goodness sake, when they took the field against the White Sox. When you add that to the countless renditions of "God Bless the U.S.A." and "God Bless America" for the seventh-inning stretch, baseball gave fans an opportunity to come together. What did your local track do?