The End of the Belmont Special

There was article in the Times this weekend lamenting the loss of the 100 year old direct rail link to Belmont. Scroll through the photos to see one of Bartley and Tania on their way to the party!

Updated Derby Picks + some mush

Things have changed, as they always do, after my final review of this week's works at Churchill Downs, and the weather forecast for tomorrow.

I'll be betting an exacta box with Friesan Fire, Papa Clem and I Want Revenge. I'm also betting Hold Me Back and Chocolate Candy across the board.

FWIW, the best horse isn't even in the race. That'd be the filly, Rachel Alexandra, who runs in the Oaks in a couple hours.

Mushy part: Thank you to all the ladies that came out last night for cocktails. Even flying in from points across America, it was really great to be able to introduce you all, and have everyone in in one room for a few hours. I feel very blessed and lucky to have such great women friends in my life.

Derby Picks

I'll be betting an exacta box with Pioneerof the Nile, Papa Clem and I Want Revenge. I'm also playing Desert Party and Chocolate Candy across the board.

See y'all at Belmont for this year's party!

Golden Rings

Yesterday, SL and I made a trip to a crowded Aqueduct for the annual running of the Cigar Mile. The last Grade 1 stakes race for NYRA's year, it was a chance to see a quality field run in our own backyard at the Big A. These were the "pretty good" horses who say, came in 12th and 15th in the Derby this year. There was great betting to be had, with 6 legitimate contenders in the 9 horse field going off at odds between 7-1 and 10-1. Neither of us hit the Cigar Mile, but an easily attainable exacta for someone playing Tale of Ekati over Harlem Rocker would have netted them $142.50. The race ended up ugly, unfortunately, with an 9 minute inquiry that knocked Harlem Rocker down to second, and the tough 7 yr old gelding, Wanderin' Boy, needing to be euthanized after breaking down at the top of the stretch.

We did hit on a couple other races, with Steve nailing a $243 exacta on the 6th (the Demoiselle, won impressively in 9 1/4 lengths by the 2 yr old filly, Springside, who immediately was vanned off -- ugh), and I got the exactas on the 7th (The Remsen, won in 7 1/4 lengths by a 2 yr old colt trained by Larry Jones named Old Fashioned aka my first Derby pick of 2009,) and the 9th for a net total of $178. Since track money is found money to be spent immediately, we decided the best thing to do would be head straight over to Camille's and put a $300 deposit on the wedding rings she's making us.

Track winning for rings. You can't beat that. Even in a country song.

The Big Picture

Here's a fantastic news photo blog from The Boston Globe.

Some of the Breeder's Cup photos, and the ones of our president elect, are breathtaking.

Missing the Triple

Another year, another failed Triple Crown. Find myself wondering if the lack of his regular steroid shot on the 15th caused Big Brown's utter failure, or if Dutrow put 100gs on Da Tara at 34-1 and called it a day. I'm waiting for the announcement that something is wrong with the horse, and that he'll be retired without racing again. Horses just don't tank that bad without SOME reason.

Either way, easily the most anticlimactic missed Triple of the four I've seen in the past seven years. Still: great day, great undercard to lose your shirt on, and great company (SL, GregBennetts, Julia, Tania and Ramona in this year's version), barring the fact that half the bathrooms were inoperable on Belmont's biggest day of the year. And that I had to say goodbye to Haas and Brooks right before heading to the race,

Big Brown's Preakness

Big Brown dominated another field on Saturday on the second step towards winning the Triple Crown. I'm not all that wound up about this, because in the past seven years of attending Belmont, I've seen three horses get to the exact same spot (War Emblem, Funny Cide, and Smarty Jones), and seen all three go down in the mile and a half "Test of Champions." Still, it's exciting, and couldn't come at a better time for a sport that has been under harsh scrutiny since the Derby. The hype machine that goes along with this each time is already rolling.

While there's no way in hell I'd missing seeing a horse capture the Crown at my home track, these "possible" years at Belmont are a pain in the ass, with the attendance going from a full and fun 60,000 people who are actually semi-into horse racing, to a sloppy and packed scrum of 120,000 yahoos. I am also not a fan of Big Brown's trainer, nor do I think that Big Brown has beat much in the way of quality competition, in a pretty weak crop for three-year olds.

BUT....Bitching aside, his win on Saturday was impressive, with Kent Desormeaux easily finding an extra gear of acceleration on the far turn without even using a whip. The horse didn't even seem to breathe hard -- he was just out on a little run, having a good old time. It was a very dominating performance to see.

I am anxious to see his match up with the much-touted Casino Drive in the Belmont in 2 1/2 weeks. I love Casino Drive's family, so it's gonna be fun to watch it play out. Nice clip here about Big Brown's partial owner, a regular guy who's trucking business is based in....Greenpoint, Brooklyn. (Who've ever thought you could meet a Derby owner near the poop factory?)

Charm City

I have never heard Baltimore called that, but I'm told that is the city's nickname. SL and I are going down tomorrow to see andtheend on her annual spring theater sabbatical, plus make a visit to our fourth racetrack in 2008. I've never been to Baltimore. And I'm told Pimlico is a dump, but that's like saying its cold at the North Pole. Not a lot of fancy tracks out there...

Eight Belles

It's a sad week when everyone wants to talk about horse racing, but only because of very public death in the Derby. For the record: a horse has never died on the track during the Derby. I have never seen a horse run an excellent second before breaking down 1/4 mile past the finish line. Nor have I heard of a horse breaking both front ankles simultaneously, if that's actually what happened. It was a freak occurrence of unfortunate magnitude because it happened to a highly touted filly the press was following closely, AND on the one day of the year when horse racing actually might have center stage in America.

I won money on her across the board, but I still haven't cashed my ticket. I sat quietly for awhile after the race (amid a VERY fun party) sick at heart when I realized what I had happened to this spirited, competitive filly who COULD run with the boys, beating 18 of them handily. No racing fan in the world wants to see this happen, but it is an unfortunate part of the game. You can't love this sport and remain unaffected by seeing the equine ambulance pull out and the screens come up. It only means one thing: a horse is being put down.

The same way that NASCAR drivers die in wrecks, or athletes' careers end because of a torn ACL (granted, they aren't euthanized), breakdowns are a part of horse racing. PETA's been wound up all week, calling for suspension of the jockey, and making other unreasonable demands. It would be hard to make an argument that these Triple Crown horses are abused, for the horses at this level are treated like kings (with purchase prices in the millions of dollars, and their own doctors, trainers, grooms who come running when the slightest thing goes wrong), and, to be honest, better than much of lower-income America is by their own government.

Everyone wants to understand: "How does this happen?" While I don't even think anyone connected to the horse will ever be able to answer that question clearly, there are a few things that should happen to improve conditions for the horses, and hopefully prevent more injuries in the future.

1) Determine once and for all if Polytrack or any synthetic racing surface really prevents more injuries. If it does, then put the surface in everywhere. I personally don't believe this is the main solution, especially when the stats on synthethic vs dirt surfaces over the past two years are reviewed.

2) Eliminate the use of race-day drugs that may mask injuries or problems. Nowhere else in the world allows the use of drugs on race days.

3) Eliminate the use of steroids on horses in training. Eight Belles was never on steroids, but plenty of horses are, giving them similar problems, such as soft-tissue damage, to what you see in humans with repeated use.

4) Work on improving breeding lines. There are more injuries today than there were 30 years ago, and horses ran twice as many races then. Certain breeding lines (Mr Prospector as a sire, for example) are known to have more problems, racing 30% fewer times than others.

An excellent post on this topic can be found here.

The Rail

Click here for an excellent racing blog from the NY Times as the Triple Crown season begins.

The Times is always a pleasant surprise with its horse racing coverage, with most articles written by the talented Joe Drape. The articles are few and far between, but often insightful, full of depth, and occasionally even revelatory.

And I've already decided to throw out Monba in my 4 horse Derby Picks, and put in Visionaire instead. How can I not with that name??

Derby Picks as of Today

With 18 days before Derby to change my mind ten times.

Colonel John
Z Fortune
Monba
Court Vision
Visionaire (Added 4.25)

Derby 2008

I've been a little quiet on this year's Derby Preps because no one horse is knocking me out. I generally pick one of my favorites from the local Wood, which was run last Saturday at Aqueduct. While it was a gorgeous day at the track with SL and 3 newbies (two of whom, in accordance with the racing gods plans to make all people racing fans, went home winners while i was down $80 for the day), the only reason Tale of Ekati won was because no one else did. It was a S-L-O-W of pace as can be (slowest Wood since 1952) with no real standout.

I'm still leaning a bit towards Court Vision, who closed decently to come in third in the Wood. He could either do well in Derby with the extra furlong, or completely suck it up. (Insightful, I know) Colonel John, coming out of the Santa Anita Derby, looks damn good with a his powerful closing kick, and a few more (Pyro, Blackberry Road, Gayego) will shake out of the Blue Grass Stakes and Arkansas Derby this weekend.

SL and I are going to Ohio next week for six days, and will also catch some racing down at Keenland in Lexington with my family on the 19th -- the date of the Coolmore Lexington Stakes, where some late Derby contenders often run. Kentucky this time of year is absolutely beautiful, so racing or no, I am looking forward to everything being in bloom in the midwest.

Three and a half weeks until Derby. Invites coming shortly.

The New Gov

From David Paterson's Wikipedia entry:
Paterson is also a basketball player and an avid fan of the New York Mets, the New York Jets and the New York Knicks. He has been known to call in to WFAN, a major sports talk radio station in New York City.

And from the Saratoga paper:
Governor Paterson’s great grandfather on his mother’s side was a blacksmith. Like many blacks of his era, he worked with horses. He put shoes on them and one of the horses he shod was Upset. Upset delivered Man O’ War his only lifetime defeat, right here in Saratoga, in the Sanford Memorial on August 13, 1919. Upon recognizing the significance of defeating “de mostest hoss that ever wuz”; Upset’s owner, H. P. Whitney staked all of the people responsible for the horse. It was not the usual stake; he bought the trainer, the breeder and three or four stable-hands houses. One such house was for the blacksmith, Patterson’s great-grandfather.

The new house enabled Governor Paterson’s ancestors to move from, “not necessarily squalor, but certainly a giant step forward.” The brownstone was in what is now the Fort Green section of Brooklyn. It is the home where Governor Paterson returned after his birth.

Maybe he'll save OTB.

One Swell Day

Sunday in Hong Kong started with absolutely amazing Dim Sum at Fu Sing Shark Fin Seafood Restaurant in Wan Chai (best pork buns i've ever had), a day of racing including the Hong Kong Derby at Sha Tin Racecourse, and Hong Kong hot pot for dinner in Causeway Bay at FF Hot Pot.

Racing in Hong Kong was great. We paid about US$15 extra and showed a passport stamp dated less than 3 weeks old to get into the 'members only' section of the track, which is a nice touch to make things more enjoyable for us tourists. The racecourses are cleaner than most of the ones in NYC, and there are SO many different ways to bet, also named differently than trifectas, exactas, doubles, etc. In a very smart tactic to help you to part with more of your money, guides who speak English and Chinese are standing around simply to help the racing fan figure out how it all works. Minimum bets are HK$10 (about US$1.25).

The races, like most of the rest of the world excepting the US, are run primarily counterclockwise on turf. We were there for two of the biggest races of the season, the Queen's Silver Jubilee Cup and the Hong Kong Derby. The Derby here, interestingly enough, is for four year olds rather than three year olds because Southern Hemisphere horses (lots from Australia and New Zealand) mature later than ones from the Northern Hemisphere. Perhaps because of whenever the birthing season falls in the South? Sha Tin holds about 80,000, but even on the biggest day of the year, it was civilized and spacious. Nothing like a possible Triple Crown Day at Belmont. Picture of the setting below: racing surrounded by giant buildings and mountains.

Going for dinner was pretty amusing, as we were first seated in one restaurant and given the menu for the Hot Pot. Hot Pot basically means you order a variety of raw meats or seafood (chicken, beef, oysters, live shrimps, all kinds of offal, and god knows what else kind of mystery meats. Ox testicle anyone?) and its thrown into this boiling spiced pot of broth until it's cooked. Sort of a 70s meat fondue vibe. We sit, get the hot pot menu, until it's whisked away from us and we are given another menu with no hot pot choices. We keep saying "hot pot, hot pot, hot pot" like Bart and Lisa Simpson as we have no idea what is going on, and the communciation is sketchy at best. Finally, ten minutes later, some old guy motions us up, and takes us two doors down to where there's more space in the other half of their restaurant, and someone who speaks decent English acts as our hot pot guide. Yum. Although I think it was the culprit of the most horrific case of food poisioning in my life that appeared last night. More on that shortly because, after all, who doesn't want to hear about how sick I got????

Renovations

Very exciting. As I type, two dirty grips (one named SL) are moving lumber into my house to do a fix on the deck stairs today. No more sketchy slanted steps to gingerly climb down. And the new 42" flat screen TV from CostCo was hung on Sunday.

Derby Day this year is going to be better than ever.

ADDENDUM: the boys managed to smash a precariously hung window to smithereens, but at least it's finally getting fixed tomorrow after being broken a couple summers back by a roommate of mine.

Breeder's Cup 2008

Monmouth Park is only 60 miles south of the city on the Jersey shore, but since I never, ever go to Jersey, Breeder's Cup on Saturday was my first trip to this park. It's a small, gorgeous old track whose staff was absolutely idiotic about how they handled the overpriced seating for a smallish crowd of 41,000 on a miserable day of weather. The track was a sloppy mess, and had to effect the outcome of more than one race. While it was easy to get in and out via car, Monmouth's biggest day on the national stage was marred by a complete lack of regard for the most hardcore group of racing fans there is. 'Nuff said about that.

I always lose cash on Breeder's Cup day, for separating any equine stars out of the field of the best horses in the world is next to impossible. There is always money to be made, with most every entry going off at 4 or 5-1. Not too bad: I was only down $65 for the day, with Tania taking a biggest loss after dropping her newly replenished voucher worth over $100. Ouch. Lamest way to lose money at the races.

The worst note of the day occurred during the Classic, with European star George Washington needing to be euthanized on the stretch after sustaining a visibly gruesome injury that caused an audible gasp from the crowd after Curlin's winning run. Curlin tore through the final two furlongs like the champ he is, unfortunately, most of us were watching George Washington pull up lame in horror.

Still, it was absurd to get the Horse of the Year at a price of 4-1 (!!), and some money was made.

A Racing Note

The 3-yr old horse I was hot on all spring, Any Given Saturday, is finally starting to blossom as evidenced by his 4 1/2 length win in last Sunday's Haskell at Monmouth Park. The 113 Beyer score he achieved is higher than any number put up by Street Sense, Curlin or Rags to Riches in the Triple Crown races this year.

It looks like he won't be running in the Travers ("The Summer Derby") up at Saratoga on the 25th, but I'm glad to see him becoming the horse we only had seen flashes of. Although I'll miss that Derby, I am hoping to catch a couple days of racing at the Spa at the end of the month, including the Grade 1 Woodward for 3 year olds and up on September 1st.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

•I realized that Madrid has changed in the past nine years from a cosmopolitan-yet-still-very Spanish city into more of a generic, European Union one. Globalization strikes again. Walking and eating in Madrid continues to be great fun, especially on the narrow streets of the Malasena district, and doing a tapas bar crawl to start your evenings before dinner is always good. I was able to see some of my favorite art again at the Prado via Francisco Goya's series of 14 creepy images called "The Black Paintings." Another highlight was spending a morning working (discussing Jason's unfortunate departure via phone with my bosses, damn) at Chocolateria San Gines while having churros con chocolate.

•I went to a bullfight at Las Ventas in Madrid that Helen, Julia and I all found disturbing. First of all, there's no "fight." The bull is going to die, and he's definitely going to lose. Six bulls are on the card each night, but we could only stomach two. The first one was pretty horrible, as the bull was not given a quick, clean death. He simply wouldn't go down and bled and bled and bled. The second one made a little more sense, as we watched the intricate interplay between bull, three matadors, the cape and the crowd. While I'll go to any type of spectacle or sporting event in an effort to understand a culture better, this event is a little tough to handle. BUT: Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon is in hand because the whole thing is definitely intriguing. (But I hate Hemingway.)

•I ate horse meat (the dreaded cavallo) not once but TWICE, including cavallo carpaccio with greens. It really IS on about half the menus in Verona. Julia and I only made it part way through that plate, for the more we talked about it, the closer we both got to needing to go outside to vomit. My take: leaner, saltier, with not as much flavor as beef. And I probably don't need to go there again.

•I had a few-day affair with a very funny, blue eyed trombone-playing Italian named Diego from the Verona Opera orchestra...because ten days in Verona means you have enough time to have dates, and enough time to see two operas in the 2,000-year-old Roman Arena. (Plus, go "backstage" to visit. Too funny. And familiar.) Seeing these operas in the arena on a clear warm Italian night is something I am not going to forget for a long time (even with all the mean Germans around us who refused to smile). Magical, and although I have no appreciation or clue about opera, I caught myself tearing up a little bit in one part. Who knew?

•I spent five days in Production Geek Summer Camp at the always charming Hotel Elefante in Verona (home of 20 pet peacocks wandering about!) About 8 other people from various publishers were there doing press OKs at the same time I was, along with my friend/sales rep and her family, so there were loads of people to talk shop with while drinking wine at random hours in the garden. While these work trips usually stress me out at some point when things go horribly south, this one was the best one yet, and the next issue of Vis (called Private with a Louis Vuitton case) will be out in October. I realized I am very fond of Verona, and will miss it until I go back again (maybe next spring?), but having visiting cohorts in Julia and Jason certainly made it all the better.

•My Spanish and Italian improves the more I ghetto-talk my way through things. And I learned some seriously dirty words in Italian.

Best in Decades

Good column from John Pricci on why this year's Triple Crown races, and the crop of 3 year old horses involved, are the best since the hallowed days of the 70s.

Belmont 2007

Great day with Tania, Julia and Goldie for this year's Belmont, with Denis, of course, around and in attendance, plus were able to accommodate Keller, Schoenfeld (carrying about 200 Xanax), Culyba, and Shelby into the area of our clubhouse seats for much silliness and bullshitting.

I was down about $85 on the five graded races prior to the big one, but after seeing that big, gorgeous girl in the paddock, I was even more sure who to bet. So I hit the tri, had her across the board, and walked with about $120, i.e. about broke even for the day. Filly or no: she simply looked like, and ran as the best horse. A good horse is a good horse, colt or filly. My men Pletcher/Velazquez finally won a Triple Crown race together, after Pletcher posted an 0-fer 28 in previous races.

There were three incredibly competitive races comprising this year's Triple Crown, but seeing this gal stumble out of the gate, recover without incident, make a huge four-wide move on the last turn, and fight Curlin off down the stretch turned this one into the most exciting of the three. Do yourself a favor and watch the replay online, for I am still getting goosebumps thinking about the race. The cheer the crowd gave her as she paraded in front of the grandstand on the way back to the winner's circle was stirring and deserved. It's going to be interesting to see what they do with her next but I hope they keep running her with the best competition, rather than playing it safe and taking her back to only Distaff (f.) races.

Although only 46,000 were there to see it, it was a race for the ages, one for the record books, etc. etc. And where were YOU when the filly won for the first time in 102 years? I say it every year, but THIS truly was the best Belmont ever.