Guest Starring: Anthony MacDonald

Published: May 24, 2011 12:23 am EDT

Trainer-driver Anthony MacDonald sent in the following letter on staggered draw times and driver scratch times. MacDonald would like to see more tracks space out the times between draws on the same day, which in his opinion would do a better job at filling races with appropriate horses and give catch-drivers more time to choose their mounts.

MacDonald's letter appears below. Please note that the opinions expressed in the following letter are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect Standardbred Canada.


Over the past few years I have been asking race offices all over Ontario to have driver scratch times uniform. Most tracks have a three-day draw box and follow that up with scratch times the next day around 10:00 a.m.

Some tracks don't conform to this and have four-day draws and three-day scratch times. This is very confusing for trainers and drivers alike and as a driver, this makes scheduling very difficult.

On many occasions I and my fellow drivers have been forced to make decisions on one card before the other has been drawn. I have a family, bills, and a mortgage and like most of us with families, I would like to keep the game of chance to the gamblers.

I find it disturbing the lack of co-operation by most racetracks on this topic. I have been informed that this topic is on the "agenda" of the ORC.

With the stakes season upon us I urge the racetracks to work with each other to fix the problem of draw and scratch times. Staggered draw times would allow tracks to co-operate and fill much needed claimers properly instead of foolish condition claimers that are made to feed our claiming horses to the waiting, not priced condition horses. If, for instance, Grand River draws Friday at 9:00 a.m, why can't Woodbine draw at 10, Western Fair at 11 and Flamboro at noon?

This system would let all drivers also have a scratch time at 10:00 a.m the following day.

Grand river has an answering machine, some tracks and race offices are facebook friendly, some use their smart phones or texting. The ORC's practice of fining participants because of archaic race office mismanagement in our province is needless and should not continue.

I have talked to and heard from many trainers and drivers who have brought this to the ORC's attention like I have. Is this such a hard thing to fix? If Fredrick J. MacDonald can learn to text, how can't race offices?

Today is May 24th, I call on either the ORC or our own races offices to fix this long lingering problem before June 1. As I said before the stake season is here, let's all move into the 21st century.

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