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Sunday, December 25, 2011

An Example of a Cost of Doing Business

You have heard me talk about how fines are inadequate and for some people, they are the cost of doing business?  I found a perfect example of this in this week's Fine and Suspension List.  Granted, they fall into the minor offense category.  Yannick Gingras was three time fined for not having both feet in the stirrups during the race.  The first time on December 14, he was fined $100.  On December 18, he committed the same offense twice and was fined an additional $100 per offense.  Clearly, a $100 fine did not get him to change his habits.  For a driver of his ability, what is a $100 fine?  Now make that fine $500 or more and then see Gingras change his tune.

Same thing with Brett Miller,  Does anyone think a fine of $50 for driving inside the Euro Rail/Pylon Violation is going to stop him from doing this again?  Think that fine is going to sop them?

Do I See Correctly?  Looking at the same fines and suspensions list I saw a fine for a driver driving a slow quarter/half and another fine for someone failing to file a claim of foul.  How often do you see these infractions cited these days?  Hardly ever.  These judges deserve to be promoted.

2 comments:

JLB said...

Please provide this link in the future, to make it easy for us to see who has been "naughty", not nice.
Seriously, the clue to cleaning up the business is found in one of the rulings listed, whereby a horse was suspended for 30 days and forced to qualify after that, for having an unacceptable TCO2 level. Add a $ 500 entry fee in order to be allowed to qualify, and provide that money to the funds-starved testing labs. Putting horses on the shelf, and not just suspending trainers, will affect unethical owners utilizing unethical trainers where it hurts, in the wallet.

T.J. Burkett said...

@JLB:

The USTA gathers fines and suspension data from all participating jurisdictions and posts it every Friday. The list can be accessed at the "Horsemen" page under "Rules/Regulatory: http://horsemen.ustrotting.com/rules_reg.cfm