Kenny Mayne vs. grumpy horse racing writer

So, Santa Anita is looking for a new race caller with the retirement of the iconic Trevor Denman (although he will still call races at Del Mar), and brought Kenny Mayne in to call a race today as a promotional stunt.

Race 5 (MSW) at SA on 1/17/16 at Santa Anita Park on Jan 17, 2016 | Race Result | BloodHorse.com

He does a legitimately awful job, including calling the wrong horse as the winner. It was the fifth race on a shit Sunday card and was not a stakes race. No big deal, right? Well, it was to the Daily Racing Form's Brad Free.



This didn't go over with Mayne, who may or may not have been into his cups hours later.





Kenny Mayne on Twitter
Kenny Mayne on Twitter
Kenny Mayne on Twitter

I thought it was half funny, half sad.

 

Kenny is back for more. It's like kicking a sad old dog.

 

For the entire stretch run it's only a two-horse race. I can understand getting the wrong name when there's four horses within a neck, but not when you've only had to concern yourself with two names for the last 30 seconds.

 

Without question it is an impossibly hard thing to do. It's one thing to memorize one set of names to jockey silks, but how you put one group out of your mind so you can rememorize a different set every 30 minutes is a rare talent.

 

I see only one tweet from Free, so I'm not sure how much of a twitter fight this was. And maybe I'm interpreting it wrong, but I think Free is upset with the track, not with Mayne. Certainly he knows how difficult a task it was for a first-timer. But I can see Brad's side. And anyone who could've potentially torn up a ticket because of the call, probably would be even more upset. Maybe the track should've recorded the call and played it between races for the promotional aspect. Then Mayne could've really had some fun. Anyway, I think he was too sensitive here, but he's also not Steve Harvey, either.

 

If you ripped up your ticket because of a race call, you deserve to lose.

 

Not a fan of Free's "get off my lawn" hot take, but Mayne's "promote the sport" point isn't much better. Nobody is going to start caring about horse racing because barely-a-celebrity Kenny Mayne called a race.

 

SC just aired the feature, which obviously was the goal from the start. He legitimately sucked. And I don't follow horses other than the TC but it immediately registered to me that the other horse won. It was pretty darn close but a guy who claims to know horse racing from a young age should have seen it. In fairness, he said before the race even started, hang on to your tickets til it's official. "Especially in this case." In the end, no biggie. His reaction to the tweet is childish. Acknowledge it/defend it if you must and move on.

 

Very well-put. I think this was an unnecessary pissing match where neither one was in the right.

It's not like the horse racing business is booming to the point where Mayne's appearance is going to hurt it. And it would have been nice for Mayne to be graceful about it and either ignore it, or be classy in acknowledging it and move on.

But Mayne's schtick of always being the smartest, most clever and funniest guy in the room doesn't lend itself to doing that.