Monthly Archives: November 2007

Congrats to GG

Garret Gomez after riding AGS in the Classic (Raymond Haddad)

On tying Jerry Baily’s 2003 record for 70 stakes wins in a year… and the year’s not over yet!

His next chance to break the record is in today’s 8th at Hollywood Park, the Moccasin Stakes aboard 9-5 morning line favorite Spring Awakening.

Good Luck!

(and check out the rest of Raymond’s stellar BC photos here!)

File Away for Future Use

The Red Smith was a jam packed field of evenly matched horses. So jammed packed that my pick, Encinas, got completely bottled up behind a wall of horses. He was the first post position but had the bad fortune of being stuck behind Bee Charmer, who starting going backwards at the top of the stretch. He definitely had some run but nowhere to go so I’ll be keeping an eye out for him.

The payouts were kind of insane! Ah, the joy of a big field with no clear favorite.

Exacta: $191

Trifecta: $3,711

$2 Super: $62,207

Dime Super: $3110.35 (!!)

I liked many of them. Besides having Encinas to win I had an exacta box of True Cause (placed) and Musketier (showed)… they both looked great in the parade. In addition to about 3 dime super boxes I also had Crown Point across the board. He lost show by head bob. What I liked about him was that his last win came off of a switch to dirt and then back to turf. His last race on polytrack so I thought he might improve, and he did, just not enough!

As for Dave, he seemed to have a good trip and closed impressively. I’m always happy to see Barclay Tagg win! Dave is owned in part by Parting Glass Racing, a partnership group, another thing I’m always happy to see.

Slew’s Tizzy to Try Turf

Slew’s Tizzy and Robby Albarado pulling an upset in the Coolmore Lexington (Emily Cathcart)

Slew’s Tizzy is entered in the Commonwealth Turf Stakes this Sunday at Churchill.

I really like this guy and hope that perhaps he’ll like the turf given his penchant for polytrack (and slop!). I didn’t catch his run on the BC under card where he showed, but his last few races prior to that were less than stellar. Hopefully he’s one of those horses that improves with age.

Speaking of which, there’s an interesting discussion going on over at Superfecta about “who would you want to see challenge Curlin next year?”.

I think there are plenty of 3 year olds with potential to blossom in the way Lawyer Ron did this year, don’t you?

Alexander Tango Race Replays

I had the good fortune to be at Belmont for the running of the Garden City (full recap here) and, as I noted, Alexander Tango looked AMAZING in the parade.

Usually the only thing I can tell you about a horse by looking at it is whether or not I think it’s cute, but she looked so ready to kick a$$. She reared up a bit in the parade and the crowd really reacted. Her run was impressive, about 4 wide and coming on strong in the stretch. I feel very lucky to seen it it live.

Here she is in the Irish 1000 Guineas Trial (Gr3). She sits nicely just off the pace and then explodes in the stretch. Again, impressive.

Perhaps the saddest part is that they were looking forward to running her next year, something we could use a lot more of around here.

Not Exactly

Since this was past weekend was the first weekend in a loooong time that I wasn’t busy handicapping, I attended to many festering projects around GbG manor.

One them was what I refer to as the annual tax write off. The Lady and I ruthlessly edit our various belongings with the goal of donating as much as possible to a local thrift shop (that has great stuff btw).

I had been wondering about the location of the Exacta plaque for awhile. I got it in a thrift store in Stockholm in 1999 as a joke gift for The Lady as she has a thing about always being right. Not knowing an Exacta from lingenberry, I thought it was Swedish for exactly (it isn’t).

When I gave it to her, along with a few other thrift scores, she looked at the whole lot and shrugged. I specifically asked her “don’t you like this?”. I believe “eh” was the answer. I liked it, but she kept it and stuffed away somewhere (which is why we have to do a “space clearing” at least once a year).

At some point during this summer I remembered the Exacta and asked if she remembered where it was. She thought it was in her closet but didn’t want to deal with looking for it because it would mean having dig through an inordinate about of stuff.

Fast forward to this past weekend. The annual crap-be-gone yielded one the of the many eerie premonitions of my new found “hobby”. It’s worth noting that the Exacta is also my favorite and most frequently placed bet.

Now I just have to find a good place for it. As it stands at the moment it’s probably going to go right below a weird painting that consists of 9 horses and looks like a study in perspective by either a child or an undergrad painting student who’s major is not art… another weird precursor.

One Thousand and One Nights

Premium Tap in the parade prior to winning the Woodward in 2006 (Jane E Hill)

Which is how long it seems since we’ve seen Premium Tap.

Apparently Allam, as he’s known in Saudi Arabia, has won his two starts since gamely placing to Invasor in the Dubai World Cup. The good news is that we’re likely to see him again in Dubai, which means we’ll see him.

Premium Tap Wins in Saudi Arabia

Premium Tap Wins Again in Saudi Arabia

[Bloodhorse]