*Crickets*
Battle of Hastings, who has won the first two legs of the Grand Slam of Grass, is apparently not entered in the third leg that runs this weekend, the Secretariat. Not that you’d know about this by reading the coverage of the race as there is no mention of Battle of Hastings or why he’s not running.
As if it wasn’t already obvious enough that the relatively new Grand Slam of Grass was a bit under the radar, the connections of Battle of Hastings weren’t even there because of the series!
“To be honest, we didn’t know about the Grand Slam and all the bonuses until we got here” for the Turf Cup race, Ayers said. “We were just looking at the purse money. We figured we could race him at Hollywood for $100,000 or come to Virginia for $500,000. Like Mike said, it was pretty much a no-brainer.”
While it didn’t turn out so great for Colonial Downs this year, they already got what they needed from the series… decent races to anchor some marketing. Arlington doesn’t need the marketing juice with the Arlington Millions and Beverly D on the same card. So there you have it… perhaps we should start calling it the Half Slam of Grass?