Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem Feb. 26, 2026

A good Thursday morning to you all! I wanted to write a little bit today about communication from tracks to the public on a variety of things. As a racecaller, my primary duty is always to inform the public not only about what happens during the race, but about prices, inquiries, changes, and even paging someone to let them know they left their lights on in the parking lot. So this is a topic I think about a fair bit, and how we can do it better? 

Clearly, the most sensitive issue for reporting is injuries sustained during a race, be they equine or human. I try to report as much as I can whenever there is an accident of any kind, but I’m very cognizant of not reporting what I don’t know. Early in my announcing career at Portland Meadows, we had a horse who unseated the rider in a spill turning for home. The rider sat up, and the horse came running towards the grandstand, and I proclaimed after the race that “both horse and rider appear to be fine.” Unfortunately, as the horse got closer, it was very clear that the horse probably wasn’t going to be fine. I felt awful and felt that I’d failed not only the public listening, but in particular the horse’s connections, with whom I happened to be friends with. I called them and apologized profusely for my mistake, and they were understanding. 

Learning from that, I generally try only to update if it’s completely obvious what’s happening and how the horse and rider might be. Tampa Bay Downs follows a good protocol of waiting until it receives reports from the medical staff on horse and rider before reporting the conditions of both. I think from the public there’s often a demand to get that information out quickly, but sometimes there isn’t enough detail to give out until the horse has been taken back to the shedrow and seen by a vet, or the rider to the hospital.

Another issue is that many tracks don’t actually have reporters covering such things. Public handicappers are often removed from the track in a studio, or the paddock and track announcers are stuck upstairs. The information about injuries is usually a few steps away from me before I get any to pass along. I think social media makes getting information out to the public very convenient, but it has also increased the demand for immediate answers when sometimes it just takes a while for answers to get back to people who can distribute them. 

I talked with some members of the racetrack officials' board, R.O.A.P., today, and they discussed possibly implementing some better protocols for announcers to communicate how and why a steward's decision is made. I told them I’d absolutely be for this because I think a lot of times announcers are left to their own devices to describe why a decision was made. Now, most of us are horseplayers and have a general sense of what happened and why, but we’re certainly not trained in the actual rules that are being applied when a decision is made. I think the more information we can get out to the public, the better, in situations like inquiries. I once worked at a track with a steward who said to show an inquiry replay only twice, and I couldn’t have disagreed with him more. Keep looping it so players get as many looks as possible at the alleged infraction.

Have a great weekend, everyone!