U.S. horse racing needs cameras in stewards' rooms

There's an old saying in legal circles: Justice should not only be done, it should be seen to be done. Nowhere is this more true than in American horse-racing.

Each day, horse-racing stewards - the judges, juries and executioners of our sport - make decisions at tracks that can affect hundreds of thousands - even millions - of dollars of wagering money. They hear protests from jockeys, launch inquiries of their own and collect evidence from all sides. They listen, weigh, decide and sometimes overturn race results that can turn winners into losers and vice versa.

All in secret.

No cameras, no microphones, no way of verifying the stewards' rulings, no recourse. The result is a sense of mistrust and - occasionally - even outright disbelief. U.S. horse-players are for the most part still recovering from the shocking non-disqualification of Bayern for causing massive interference at the start of America's premier race, the Breeders Cup Classic, more than a week after it happened at Santa Anita racetrack in California.

The worst part of it is: we don't know what happened in the stewards' room after the race was run. Did Bayern's trainer, Sanat Anita-based Bob Baffert, telephone the Santa Anita stewards in the midst of deliberations as he has previously? Did the stewards discuss Bayern's previous race habits? Was the decision unanimous? Were American race-goers who bet on the favorite Shared Belief robbed?

In the land that invented live legal television news with the groundbreaking CourtTV in 1991, that's just not good enough. CourtTV pioneer Steven Brill, who also founded American Lawyer magazine, understood that the public couldn't retain faith in a criminal-justice system that kept its most important process - the criminal trial - largely hidden from public view. So he set up cameras and micophones in courtrooms and broadcast it on television, creating an American phenomenon.

As Wired magazine journalist Jeff Goodell wrote in a 2003 interview with Brill: "Court TV destroys the wall between society and its laws, making reporters and jurors of us all."

So it goes with horse-players. In the 21st Century, we all have to be our own jurors and reporters. And so a sector like racing that exists on open information cannot function effectively with a judicial system that resembles a Freemasons' meeting. Heck, even Congress telecasts its deliberations, for better or for worse. American horse-racing needs to do better.

If that sounds hard, consider the situation in Australia. There, all proceedings involving decisions that could theoretically overturn a race result are broadcast and aired live over the track feed. No more guessing what the stewards are accusing the jockey (or trainer) of or what kind of defense they are mounting. It's all out there, and the bettors love it - as the Twitter feeds of American players who have discovered Australian tracks will attest.

The idea was so good that the British adopted it in 2007 and it is now a standard feature of their race broadcasting as well.

American horse-players are now starting to advocate for more openness in the sport. Let's start by imitating the Australian model and broadcasting all stewards-inquiry deliberations live over the track feed. It's good for the players and good for the sport. More openness in the system means more confidence amongst the customers, and that's good for everybody's business.