| Breeders’ Cup race after Breeders’ Cup race, Churchill Downs track superintendent Butch Lehr paced from his nearby office to the racetrack where jockeys and trainers gathered after each and every championship event.
Lehr, who since has come under fire for what many pundits, fans and horsemen deemed an unfair and biased racetrack, said the post-event barnstorm of ire has been in stark contrast to the reception he received from jockeys and trainers as the events unfolded.
“Nothing was said to me all day long,” Lehr said last week in a lengthy, exclusive interview with The HorsePlayer Magazine. “My day was great in terms of jockeys and trainers. Just congratulations and chit-chat. Not a single person said a negative word to me all day about the track.”
Conspiracy theorists, however, jumped to the fore when four consecutive Breeders’ Cup World Championships races were won by the horse breaking from the inside spot in the starting gate. In theory, a “souped-up” portion of the racetrack can aide and abet a suspect horse who benefits from firmer (and faster) footing. The term “rail bias” gets tagged to such days when those along the inside of the track appear to have received an unfair edge.
Lehr said that jockeys often are his first line of communication when assessing raceday track conditions once the program has started. Retired Hall of Fame rider Pat Day served as Lehr’s go-to guy on many Churchill Downs racedays over the past 30 years, informing the maintenance chief of any potential problems. Lehr also has been known to bounce in and out of the jockey’s room in-between races to gauge their feedback on the surface.
Another group that remained silent throughout the proceedings was the state-appointed stewards. Lehr said that he has received mid-day calls in the past from racing’s “refs” inquiring about track conditions and concerns. Had there been a cause for alarm on such an important day of racing in the public spotlight, he contends, his office phone would have been ringing.
“The first ones who would have said anything would have been the stewards,” Lehr said. ”If somebody complains to the stewards, and they do for many reasons, but mostly about turf course conditions, I’m the next to hear about it.”
High Maintenance
Keeping a fair and safe playing surface is as critical in horse racing as it is in many sports, notwithstanding a championship golf course or a high-banked NASCAR facility. Butch Lehr’s responsibility to those who race over his track, and those who wager hundreds of millions of dollars on those four-legged athletes, is to strive for perfection in both safety and fairness.
Lehr oversees a staff of 30 employees who maintain the racing surfaces and barn areas at America’s most recognizable racetrack. An eight-person crew, specifically, tends to the daily needs of Churchill Downs’ main dirt track. They utilize a fleet of tractors, graders, blades and other heavy tools in an attempt to evenly distribute the soil across the racetrack. Lehr, himself, has taken an active role over the past three decades with his hands-on style.
“I do the track grading myself,” he said, referring to the daily, mid-morning practice of raking the dirt. “I drive the tractor, and have ever since I became superintendent. When I do it myself, I can feel the track. It’s like farmers who work their fields and know the soil under them. You get a feel for what’s right and what needs fixed.”
PGA Tour course superintendents utilize compaction readings to meet set standards for things such as firmness of the putting greens. While horse racing has no set standards for how firm or loose a racetrack comprised of Mother Nature’s finest ingredients should be, compaction readings are utilized by superintendents, Lehr included.
“I don’t do (compaction readings) on a daily basis,” Lehr said. “We’ve had tests done, but it’s not something that’s done every day. I haven’t seen it in practice every day (in horse racing) and don’t think that kind of specific equipment and test are necessary daily.
“What we use every single day in horse racing is what is called a ‘track conditioner.’ It’s the last thing we do before the first race of the day, and it compacts the surface. Our track is eight inches deep in material, which sits on a 12-inch clay base. The horse never touches the base of our racetrack. The track conditioner is a full-proof piece of equipment that cuts where it’s hard and packs where it’s soft. It cuts every square inch of dirt you go over, and its teeth are set at an exact depth by hydraulics. We try to keep the soil materials graded smoothly and evenly, and on Breeders’ Cup Day, I assure you, that thing was as smooth as a pool table.”
Churchill Downs and many of the nation’s top racing venues have been accused in recent years of “speeding up” their racing surfaces on major event days. While the benefit of a faster clocking on the teletimer seems fruitless to most, it remains an apparently curious practice. The 2006 Breeders’ Cup surface was not part of that discussion however, as moderate final times for the championship events were not to be confused with drag racing.
“The track was listed fast, but I don’t think it was lightening fast,” Lehr said. “In the fall of year, this track is not as fast because of the weather. In hot, humid times, this track runs a full-second faster without doing a single thing differently on our end. Humidity makes the biggest difference in track times, because the moisture holds the track together.
“Our track, if anything, has a history of being cuppy at times (a word used to describe a track that does not have enough moisture in it to hold the sand together, which causes the sand to break out under the horses’ feet). Whatever the surface, though, the bottom line is that some like it and some don’t. When the race is over, the winner’s usually happy and they do not comment on why they liked the track – it’s about the performance of a great horse, a great rider. Those who lose, nearly always, first say their horse didn’t handle the track. I wish we could talk to horses and ask them if they handled it or not. Until then, it will remain a horseman’s first excuse until the end of time.”
Blade Runner
With a 3.5-degree banking on its turns, the Churchill Downs racetrack, like all of its peer surfaces, tends to collect large amounts of shifted soil along the bottom of the banks (at the inner rail). To combat the gravitational shift of materials, track maintenance crews “blade” the inner rail, a process that pushes surface soils off of the now-deepened areas. Soon after, a grader will come along and evenly distribute and rake the re-shifted soil.
Blading the track’s inside paths on Breeders’ Cup morning became a lightening rod for those clamoring about a rail bias. The practice, they contend, made the inside rail less deep and beneficial to those horses who traveled over its inner path. Lehr said that Churchill Downs’ inside portion of the racetrack was, indeed, bladed around 9:30 a.m. on Breeders’ Cup Day, but that the track is bladed every single raceday unless it is muddy. Lehr, himself, then drove tractor that subsequently graded the dirt on Breeders’ Cup day.
“When they saw us ‘pulling the ridge,’ as I call it, people came back and said that we did something unfair,” Lehr said. “The fact is, dirt settles under the rail if you don’t pull it back every day. It’s not anything we’re doing for one racing day; that’s something we do every single day. There’s just not much hype the rest of the year…nobody pays attention to what we do year-round. We blade each and every day.”
Setting Standards
With differing soil contents and natural weather conditions both real-time factors in track conditions, it is difficult to imagine a situation where events like the Breeders’ Cup World Championships could be held in identical surface conditions each year from track-to-track. Even synthetic racing surfaces, such as Polytrack, Cushion Track or Tapeta, each have their own unique characteristics and tendencies.
“It would be nice if we could come up with a surface we could all use, but I don’t know one that would be the same everywhere,” Lehr said. “Humidity is such an important factor in track condition, and it changes from region-to-region and surface-to-surface. And, who says which one of the synthetic surfaces is best? I’m keeping my ears open.”
Churchill Downs, with help from the NTRA, hosted more than 80 of the world’s foremost track maintenance personnel this past July as part of a fifth annual forum. Lehr was a presenter at the forum, teaching his peers about how his crew maintains Churchill Downs and the equipment they utilize.
The Firestorm
Racing media and internet outrage over the potential rail bias took flight in the hours and days after the Breeders’ Cup. While pundits and fans pointed fingers, Lehr said that he has not received any similar blame from either Churchill Downs or Breeders’ Cup officials. And though he became the center of the storm, Lehr said he was most disappointed that The HorsePlayer Magazine interview request he granted was only the third made on his behalf to discuss the situation, and the first fully published in a national manner.
“It’s not my style to duck anything or pass it off,” Lehr said. “The longer I’m in this business, the more it amazes me how our business has to work through our hard problems. But I’m not afraid to talk about this publicly.”
Fueling part of the storm, no doubt, is the fact that inside information as to a known track bias would be powerful information in the wagering world. Churchill Downs, Inc. racetracks all provide daily maintenance reports in real time on their websites.
Skeptics of the rail situation on Breeders’ Cup Day not only feel slighted in their own handicapping efforts, but also remain leery that track maintenance employees could abuse their edge at the betting windows.
“Nobody is allowed to gamble in uniform,” Lehr said when posed with the question of he or his Churchill Downs’ track maintenance employees wagering. “On their own time, with all the opportunities to bet (internet, phone accounts, simulcast races at other tracks, etc.), it’s not against the law to bet. But our crew is not supposed to be betting when in uniform and on duty.”
Personal Reaction
Lehr not only had his eyes on the racing action on the track, but also was monitoring both the ESPN and TVG telecasts on two monitors from his office between races. He said that he tries to absorb as much information as he can, including reading the post-race stakes quotes provided by the pressbox crew to glean additional insight from the riders and connections.
“When the fourth straight number one came in, at 13-to-1 (odds), we were all amazed,” Lehr admitted. “I was even dumbfounded. This is unbelievable, I thought. On the ESPN telecast, Jerry Bailey even commented that the rail is live, but not necessarily biased or an advantage.”
“You can’t make anyone win,” Lehr added when asked point-blank if a bias helped any horses on Breeders’ Cup day. “If I was that powerful, I’d be God. They (his critics) must think you can do anything.”
Worse than any real or perceived track bias, however, was the gut-wrenching disappointment over the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, where favorites Fleet Indian and Pine Island both suffered injuries, the latter resulting in euthanasia.
“After the Distaff, that was the only bad feeling I had all day. My day was over after that happened. I’m still not over it. I hate to see something like that happen. I’ve heard it a thousand times lately, how I shouldn’t take it personally because we don’t have that kind of history (of major injuries caused by a poor racing surface) here. But we’re not turning our head as to why this may have happened; I am trying to make sense of it why it happened.”
As for his Breeders’ Cup experience up to that point, Lehr said, “I was comfortable with the way things were going. I pay a lot of attention to the times of the races. We get criticized if the track is too fast. We’re not trying to make horses run faster. I think everything was perfect, track wise. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
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