Everything I needed to know about life I learned at the race track

Where have all the values gone? Sometimes it seems that everyone in the world has become so confused by the claims of competing ethical systems that he or she has retreated into a little personal world in which his or her own little desires take priority over everything else.

It's not that people are averse to shared values. Oh, no – people's hunger for a dependable set of values leads them to do things like take up new age philosophy, become activists for social causes, or simply return after long absences to the religious denominations in which they grew up. However, if these were to be sources of dependable values we long ago would have had some dependable values.

We need to look elsewhere for values, a place where values may be tested against the harsh reality of everyday life. I know the place.

I owe much of my solid ethical foundation to the thousands of hours I have spent intensely engaged in the handicapping of horse races and in the wagering of money on the horses which seemed to me to have good odds. From those thousands of hours I have learned certain immutable truths which will provide anyone with a solid framework on which to mount their conception of the good life. Yes, if you want values, go to the race track.

People at the race track are engaged in a search for Truth. And at the end of every race some people find it. A look at this successful search for truth is obviously going to be of great help to those who so far have spent their lives in unsuccessful pursuit of it. So here
are some of the Great Truths I have learned at the race track:

1. It's better to be right than to be wrong. At the track you get paid when you're right and don't get paid when you're wrong. Outside the track, not only do people not get paid for being right, they often get fired for it. Is it any wonder modern life is characterized by spiritual malaise?

2. Saying you're right doesn't make you right. At the track you don't get paid just because you claim that you knew who was going to win the race. You have to have documentary evidence. Outside the track, much of social life consists of people telling us how wonderful they are. They can do that because corrupt contemporary values prevent so-called polite people from asking for documentary evidence. Eventually people start to believe the propaganda.  Puis voilà – Brian Mulroney.

3. Talk is cheap. I once read a magazine article about how forecasts of the demand for electricity in Ontario had repeatedly been inaccurate. The article featured photographs of some of the forecasters, all of whom worked out of Toronto, and I immediately thought "Of course they didn't get it right. I've never seen any of these people at the track."

Now, if someone was any good at forecasting, wouldn't he or she be down at the track making money off that skill? Forecasting a horse race is a piece of cake compared to forecasting demand for electricity – the forecast is for the very short term, and most of the factors affecting the race are known.

The problem with the track, though, is you've got to risk your own money. When you're forecasting demand for electricity it's not your money that's at risk. You can take bold new approaches to forecasting, you can adhere to conventional approaches, or you can just flat out do a half-assed job of it – it makes no difference in the end. If you're wrong, no deduction will be made from your paycheque. They'll just put something in the annual report about unforeseen circumstances and raise the electricity bill. In other words, the entire electricity-consuming population suffers in your place.

Similarly, you can call yourself "Chainsaw" and take bold steps at the company you run without ending up out of pocket when the company loses market share as a direct result of your actions. The employees you laid off and the shareholders will end up out of pocket, though. The superiority of the race track's values is evident here.

If people were required to have a financial interest in the positions they took on public issues, that at the very least would shut up the sports broadcasters, which accomplishment alone would realize a signal improvement in the quality of life.

4. Fairy tales don't come true. The popular mind is perhaps less puritan than it used to be, but it still holds dear the puritan ideas that success is a reward for moral superiority, and that the best way to acquire moral superiority is to work hard and want to succeed. We are continually told that success comes to the hard worker rather than to the intelligent one, and to those who want to succeed, rather than to those who know how. We have practically erected a religion of motivation, the central tenet of which is the belief that if you really want to achieve something, you will achieve it.

The argument of course is that if you really want something you'll learn how to achieve it. But what if the skills required to achieve it are beyond you? Isn't that a rather obvious flaw in the argument? Or perhaps it's only obvious to those of us who have spent many hours among the intensely dedicated devotees of the track. They all want to win so bad it hurts (oh, man, it can really hurt on nights when all your tickets ended up on the floor and you're riding the bus home with all the other guys whose tickets all ended up on the floor and most of you are slumped forward thinking about how the triactor you missed in the last race paid two grand, and how you threw out the winner in the seventh that paid thirty bucks to win, and how you missed the $200 exactor in the fifth by a nose – a nose can get really short at the harness races, by the way – and the rest of you are announcing that all the drivers and trainers and owners are crooked and all the horses are on drugs – oh, the desire to win can really hurt), and every night the average racegoer goes home with less money than he or she came in with.

5. Success is not a moral quality. Outside the track, we worship success. Successful people are considered to be superior to other people in many ways. Most importantly, we believe that success is always a consequence of skill. At the track, though, we know there are many routes to success.
Anyone who's had his or her money on a trotter going off at very short odds because of its exceptional equine qualities and watched it bump its nose on the starting gate, go off stride at the beginning of the race as a result, and finish thirty lengths back knows that there's more to achieving things in life than passing a success fitness examination.

Speaking of the harness races, people would have saner views of success if they understood what the phrase "get up off a garden trip" means. Many a harness horse beats superior horses simply because it had less work to do during the race. A horse has a garden trip when it races behind the leader – in the pocket, as they say. At the end the leader often tires and the horse in the pocket, relaxed after having
been shielded from the wind, darts out and waltzes home in front ("gets up"). Sound like the role your boss plays on projects?

Yes, an acquaintance with the world of competitive zoology quickly highlights the moral defects of modern society. So grab your bankroll and head for the nearest racing establishment. It's time for society to get on the right track!

Everything I Needed to Know about Life I Learned at the Race Track © John FitzGerald, 2003