American Pharoah Retiring Is Everything That Is Wrong With Horse Racing

So in case you missed it American Pharoah won the Breeders Cup Classic in dominating fashion on Saturday completing the mythical Horse Racing Grand Slam. (The Triple Crown and the Breeders Cup Classic) And now the most famous race horse in 50 years has retired and is done racing. It STINKS. Listen I’m not going to sit here and pretend to understand all the economics off the sport. I know this much. I always lose money and I keep coming back. But here is the thing about horse racing. Horse racing people always ask how can we get mass appeal. How do we break into the mainstream. How do we get “non horse people” interested in the sport. Well here is a crazy idea. When you finally have a superstar athlete that becomes a household name you don’t have them retire. It would be like if the best athletes in other sports retired after 1 year. The second you start to get to know them poof they are gone. That’s what’s wrong with horse racing and why it will never have mass appeal. American Pharoah had finally become must watch TV. He was going to fill every single track he ran at and people would tune in regardless of whether they were hard core fans. That’s how you attract new people to the sport. Instead we’ll never see him again.