Brad Hennegan with the proverbial framed dollar bill from their 1st patron & my thumb (Railbird).

While reading my email this morning I got this message from Railbird, “I feel terrible you’re cut off — I must have been standing too close when taking this picture”. My reply was “I could tell when you were taking it that I wasn’t going to be in it… which was fine by me :)”

The cropped version is much better and I LOVE the look on the guy’s face (who’s name I can’t remember… so please leave a comment with your name if you’re reading this!). He’s a friend of John’s from college and the first official patron of the film!

It was a real premier with a celebrity and everything (even though I have to say I don’t know who she is, but she was attractive and well styled!). It was a nice turn out of supporters & well wishers and we were treated to a private screening of one hell of a great film.

I attended with Teresa, Jessica and Mr. Railbird, who’s not a horseplayer, but clearly knows at least a little something about racing by way of being Mr. Railbird! He gave the film the thumbs up as a well made documentary by anyone’s standards, not just for fans.

As we wandered aimlessly through the throngs of horses asses NYU students boozing away the out enjoying a quasi-balmy Thursday evening, we chatted about the film. The three of us Ladies had all seen the film a year ago when it was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. We agreed unanimously that after seeing it again it made us feel great about racing.

The sense of emotion is so palpable in the film whether it’s the trainers being nervous before a race, family members elaborating on the struggles of the trainers or the inevitable outcome of the fate of Barbaro… you could feel it all. Everyone was all in at every moment and if that’s not a draw I don’t know what is.

Seeing it again reminded me that the first race I ever purposefully watched was the 2006 Preakness. Two weeks prior I was running errands in my neighborhood and walked by a hang out spot that was full of well dressed drunk people in the middle of the afternoon. I noticed there were a hell of a lot of hats. About a block a later it came it me, the Derby.

I had flirted with horse racing prior, occasionally happening upon a race being broadcast and being taken by how absolutely stunning & powerful horses are as athletes, how damn exciting a horse race is and how two minutes is as long as I can pay attention to any sporting event. However, without any guidance I could never find a way into racing as a fan. I knew that the Derby was coming up and wanted to wanted to watch it but by the time I got home I had missed it.

A little later I got text from a friend that said simply “Horses Baby!”. She had put $20 on Barbaro at a Derby Party because she liked his name. For the next two weeks Barbaro was her horse, and she was not alone.

Since I had to hear about Barbaro for two weeks I was pretty tuned into the Preakness. When it came time to view it I needed subtitles. I really wanted to know what the hell they were talking about it but didn’t have a clue. It was obvious that everyone was expecting big things from Barbaro but that was about it.

I don’t remember much about it except for Barbaro breaking through the gate prior to the race and how the announcers intoned that it was not a good sign. I also remember thinking how much more exciting it would be if I knew the horses and what was at stake.

The film captures the hard work of each team, the hope mixed with “wait and see” and the sheer will and effort it takes to get there in a way that any great documentary does… by being there every step of the way, letting the subjects do the work (i.e., their thing) and hanging the story together in away that makes it “real”. It also shows us that the Derby itself is the real star of the film, like a play put on every year where the same actor plays the lead but the extremely talented supporting cast changes. This year’s casting of the Derby is no different.

In hindsight I was right… knowing the horses and what’s at stake does make it MUCH more exciting, then and now.

Shammy celebrating his birthday (Jessie Holmes)

What started off as a reaction to Swifty (bottom of the page) has turned into full fledged obsession “hobby”.

Now I’m a yearling!

Well, we are, but there have been recent UFO sightings that indicate perhaps the powers that be are at least listening.

Well if that’s the case, go listen in on this conversation, and this one and this one, just to name a few.

Oh wait, please don’t forget this, this, this, AND this.

And as if that wasn’t enough, there are new conversations popping up every day… you’ll tell two friends and so on, and so on, and so on.

I’ve been showing a profit so infrequently lately that I forgot about my “daily win of over $200 on one track” rule. In the middle of the afternoon at work today I had the “oh yeah!” moment.

I need to come up with a snappy for it… Share the Wealth? Giving it Back? If anyone has ideas let me know because I’d like to encourage as many horse players to do this as possible, hard to do that without a snappy name.

I had a really good day so I decided to make two donations. Since the win was at Aqueduct I donated to my regular Aqueduct/Belmont place, New York Horse Rescue and in honor of meeting Brooklyn Backstretch in person (finally!) I also donated to one of her fav charities, BEST Backstretch. I’m glad to see they got that PayPal hooked up! Although I was fully prepared to send them a check.

Top Bunk at his retirement party (wendyu)

I was just tooling around Flickr and found this nice little story.

Over the weekend a group of folks got together to retire 11 year old gelding Top Bunk, a hard knocking claimer at Hawthorne who was in the money 66% of the time!!! Of his 90 races, he was 21/23/16 with lifetime earnings of $575,000.

No doubt he’s off to get some much needed rest and relaxation, perhaps take up golf and shuffle board.

Best of luck to him and a big “well done” to the folks who retired him!

Tale of Ekati winning the Wood as my phone flies over the balcony at Aqueduct (Sarah K. Andrew)

Let’s start by examining my proclivity for procrastination. The upsides are clear, I tend to do things I normally wouldn’t like wash dishes, dust bust numerous hairballs from the Home Zoo and post plenty of “interesting content“.

This pathological behavior does, however, have a downside… one of them being that I didn’t end up with enough time to publish a post about why Tale of Ekati was my pick of the day yesterday before I had to run out to catch the A train to the Big A. But we’ll get to that (yes, I’m now going to meta-procrastinate).

Here’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for awhile, “Facebook, it’s not just for the rotten kids”. Of the many social networking sites, Facebook is the only one that “has delivered” for me for anything other than time wasting (don’t get me wrong, it’s great for that!) and proving that you’re a bigger hipster than everyone else.

I met the Hennegan Brothers on Facebook, taken part in many great discussions with people inside the industry, and now hung out with a fun bunch of Fans of Thoroughbred Racing in New York.

Group creator, the fabulous Ernie Munick (giving the thumbs up next Pablo Fragoso), organized the day billed as “Day of Degeneracy” to get people in the group to come out to the track and actually hang out (instead of just post on the group’s wall).

He also arranged for us to have our picture taken in the winner’s circle! I always wondered how to go about getting “Happy Birthday Adam “Swifty” Wiener” in the NYRA program, and now I know… you just call and give them $300! Get a group of 10 folks together and can’t afford not to do it.

Here we are, in all our glory (I’m on the far right… ironic, no?):

Note the title of the picture “Thoroughbred Racing in New York “Facebook”. It also said this in the program! This is what I meant by pioneering an analog/digital mashup… this is no doubt the first time a NYRA program has the word Facebook in it… I love it when worlds collide!

Several of the TBA folks were included in this group, Jessica at Railbird, Teresa at Brooklyn Backstretch and Alan at Left at Gate (who’s not pictured… he was very busy live blogging the whole day).

John stopped by for a few moments in between meeting, greeting and kissing babies to get folks to the premiere in 2 weeks. And of course, Swifty was there (behind Ernie in the Classy & Classic sunglasses)… we wouldn’t miss a chance to be in the winner’s circle, or perhaps more appropriately, the Wiener’s Circle (Swifty = Adam Wiener).

Did I mention it was nice out? Notice us there, no coats. We ended up sitting outside all day in a box right in front of the finish line. We were on the third floor and there was a little balcony right in front of us that was gated. The gate was rail height (about 3 feet?) so at one point Jessica started to climb over it to get a better view of the paddock below. A helpful NYRA employee came over and unlocked it for us, no doubt guessing that it would just be easier than telling us to stop climbing over it all day.

The races were great and the place was packed. When I go to a track, I like to play the card… maybe not every race, but I find it distracting to have to pop over to the TV to watch a race elsewhere and then have my final decision making time eaten into. Surprise, I also procrastinate when it comes to wagering! With this in mind I decided to take pass on playing the bazillion great stakes races not at Aqueduct.

Prior to the Wood I was doing ok, compared to how I’ve been doing on the year I was doing great, but by normal standards I was doing just OK. I had the exacta in the 6th which brought me back to within $4 of being even. I didn’t do anything interesting in the 7th or 8th, although Jessica & Swifty had Temporary Saint in the Excelsior, but the Wood was different story.

I’m always refining my handicapping style, looking for more efficient or productive ways to analyze the data. Some things I’ve started to do recently have really been helpful. I take several passes at all of the horses, in one of those passes I note the predominant running style and type of pace the horse needs to perform well. While looking at this aspect of the Wood, I noted that Tale of Ekati needed a faster pace than he got in Louisiana Derby to do his best.

In another pass I examine the workouts. Is there any pattern, how did they work prior to their last races, have they been training for endurance, speed, etc. My note on Maryfield prior to the BC was “if she fires a bullet work before the race, seriously consider her”… and she did.

Combine Tale of Ekati’s comment line with his recent two works. “Brushed break, no factor” and two handled 4F gate works at 47.2 and 47.4 geared towards increasing his speed out of the gate. I then went to watch the replay of the Louisiana Derby… bingo. He broke very tentatively, got headed and then checked out of the race. Combine all of this with impending speed duel on the front end ensuring a brisk pace and it looked really promising for Take of Ekati.

I also thought the race would set up well for Court Vision, Bill Mott didn’t put Inner Light in to help Take of Ekati! This was one of those rare times when a flash of handicapping insight occurs with my ability to wager correctly. Here’s what I did:

Tale of Ekati to Win

Exacta box of Tale of Ekati & Court Vision

Trifecta box of Tale of Ekati, Court Vision & War Pass

Anak Nakal across the board (I thought he would improve under this pace scenario, and he did, but not enough).

Fast forward to the race… Tale of Ekati broke like a dream (he’s a good student and Barclay Tagg is a good teacher!) and Inner Light was pushing War Pass into fast fractions. Things were all going according to plan. As they came into the stretch War Pass still had a decent lead but Tale of Ekati starts to come on, and come on strong.

As they come to the wire it looks like Tale of Ekati is going to get up in time… we’re all on the balcony jumping up and down, screaming like nuts when I notice something fly out of my inside jacket pocket.

Just as Tale of Ekati is making my day, my attention is turned to the box seats below to see my phone land right behind some unsuspecting guy and what appeared to be his father! It took me a few seconds to realize that Tale of Ekati did indeed win AND that I hit the tri!

I’m also happy to report that not only does my phone still work, it didn’t even have a scratch… and perhaps the best part is it didn’t injure anyone!

As if this all wasn’t great enough, I also managed to get over my fear of betting horses to win. I liked Curlin to win the Classic, Swifty and I spent almost 2 hours the night before discussing the favorites in the classic to compare and contrast each of them. Curlin it was, and at 9/2 did I bet him to win? No. This time, just like Tale of Ekati, I learned from last mistake and corrected it under favorable conditions.

It was a perfect day on many levels… and I was lucky enough to share it with some great folks! Of course it was nice to have a bunch of witnesses to a rare flash of handicapping insight, but the best part by far was that, contrary to what seems to be going on, racing felt very much alive.

The Big A (superterrific)

It was a great day yesterday, and not only because I did well (finally)… the weather was gorgeous, I finally met and hung out with a bunch of people I really like, we got to hang out in the winner’s circle, we pioneered new territory by way of digital/analog mash-up, we saw some great racing and I discovered that my phone is extremely durable!

This will all become clear later…

It was well reported today that there has been confirmation from the scientific community that not only are horses intelligent, but that they also have math skills.

There was also confirmation from wise a$$ community that horses also possess other skills.

In other news, here’s an item that suggests there are unexplored alternative methods for increasing handle. Perhaps a more adult version of Frank’s Energy Bar is in order?

Downhill Turf Course at Santa Anita (Charles Pravata)

There’s a whole helluva lot of racing this weekend! It’s somewhat head spinning. In addition to Derby and Oaks preps (really interested to see Country Star vs. Proud Spell in the Ashland) there’s a ton of action at all levels. So much so that I’m going to try to get a start on some handicapping tonight.

Until then, I just wanted to point that I’ve seen Thor’s Echo on the work tab a couple of times!

Here’s what I’ve been able to dig up at NTRA (while admittedly not digging too hard for lack of time):

2006 Eclipse Award winner for Outstanding Sprinter. Purchased privately by the Maktoum family for an undisclosed price at the beginning of the year. After two losing efforts in Dubai, he returned to Doug O’Neill’s Hollywood Park barn in May. Following surgery in August to remove a bone chip in a hind ankle, will be given time off and will point toward an ’08 campaign.

He’s a total sentimental favorite of mine as I had him to win in the 2006 Breeders’ Cup. This was not only my first Breeders’ Cup but it was the height of my “oh my god, I love horse racing and all I want to do is handicap” fever. Not like it’s gone away, it’s just more under control (I think).

With the clock ticking on the countdown to the Hennegan Brother’s film opening, they’ve made posters available for download to enable you, the fan, to help promote their film.

So get on over there, download and print a poster… hang it up at work, at school, at your favorite bar or perhaps just around your home!

Next stop, banners for your site.