Here's the deal with the betting coups.

They obviously weren't going to be made when the "overweight" jockeys were on the horses. But when he was replaced by a jockey carrying the legitimate weight some people would know that the horse carrying 115 in this race and the last according to the PPs is actually losing four, or five, or seven pounds today. In the right circumstances this could be a critical advantage. And in fact, what the clerks of scale effectively did was destroy the integrity of the PPs for much time to come. As such, it seems like a pretty serious offense to me, at least worthy of public condemnation.

But you know the NYRA has to bear more responsibility for this incident that just taking credit for turning in their employees. I could make the argument that such a situation could have never occured except in such a lax and corrupt climate as was foisted by the NYRA culture, but the responsibility I want them to take is to bring greater transparancy to their "information operations." In the case, of the weights they've gone to digital scales, but what they should be doing is televising the weigh ins to certain monitors in the granstands so that the public can be sure the digital readouts are recorded properly.

The same transparancy should apply to the detention barns. As the're set up, only the NYRA veternarian can administer LSX. The default amount is 5cc (or 5 whatever.) This is the amount the veternarian will give the horse unless a different amount is officially requested by a trainer. Which means that horses can we running with different amounts of LSX in different races. Does the public find this out? No? Which means the detention barns are officially structured to sanction cheating by allowing the manipulation of LSX amounts from effective to ineffictive back to effective levels without the public having an inkling of what is going on.

Of course, this has kind of manipulation has been going on for a long time. In my day of heard of a few instances where horses listed as second time LSX horses were really running on LSX for the first time. And if you think about it, what an easy scam that is. Of course, with the new detention barn system that couldn't happen in NY (unless the vet had tradional NYRA ethics.)

Still, the argument here is, the public has a right to know how much LSX a horse is using. Varying amount, or amounts being varied, might indeed explain improved or deteriorating performances. But more importantly I would think the NYRA would instinctively want to make the information available. If only as a PR move they would want to make operations of the detention barn as transparent as possilbe. But no, they just want to go throught the motions, pretend they care about the public, while implementing a system that now legally allows trainers to cheat.

And quite honestly until I see real transparency in the "information operaton" I'm going to presume nothing has really changed, digital scales, detention barns or not. Its the same old, same old, don't fix a problem, pretend you're fixing a problem.