Lazurus wins in 1:55.1 at Pocono Downs

Hey, did you notice Lazurus won in 1:55.1 at Pocono Saturday?

For those of you who have been hearing about the coming of the “Wonder from Down Under” to North America, you may be thinking, “I didn’t even know he was ready to race!”

Well, the pacer Lazarus N has not yet raced. And notice there are three differences between the initial sentence and the idea you had after reading the second one: 1) the Lazurus in the first paragraph is a trotter; 2) the trotter spells his name “Lazurus,” while the pacer has “Lazarus” as his birth name – note the difference in middle letters …

And 3) the most important difference – because registry books do not “overlap” worldwide, you can have a Lazurus in this country, and then if you bring another horse over, he should be called Lazarus N, to reflect he is a New Zealander in origin. (Yes, these two horses’ names are spelled differently, but I still hope that the USTA requires Lazarus to carry an “N” after his name.)

Publicists and announcers are going to dislike this recommendation, because nowadays they are in the habit of dropping “A”s, “N”s, “S”s (which the fastest trotter of all time carries in his North American incarnation), “IT”s, and so on.

But it can make a difference in public perception. Earlier this year, there was an import named Waikiki Beach, a fine pacer who is now going in the 1:50 range. But rightfully he is here officially known as Waikiki Beach A, to distinguish him from the talented trotter of not-too-distant history.

The using of this end letter I think is an important one. It IS their official name in the land in which they are racing, for the very purposes of avoiding registry (and fan) confusion.

This point was driven home to me at Foxboro over 30 years ago, where a horse named Flamboyant A was racing in a “n/w $100 per start” class, and not doing well. The announcer was calling this horse “Flamboyant,” and I thought of Billy Haughton, who had just suffered his fatal racing accident, and the very good trotting filly named Flamboyant he had had, and thinking, “Geez, Haughton would cringe to hear this cheap pacer called the same name as that top trotting filly.”

I don’t know why the letter designating country of origin has been largely dropped. Maybe it’s not “cool,” disharmonious in announcing or writing. But I think it is WRONG to drop it. The omission causes confusion, and could cause people doing research to be shaking their heads at the performance discrepancy records of horses similarly-named but not the imports.

It’s their name in North America. Like the Biblical Lazarus, we need to bring back using the whole name, with end letter, from the dead pool of fashion it is now in. And it wouldn’t take a miracle to do it.

by Jerry Connors, for Harnesslink