Earlier this week I was wandering around the internet and came across a site that some of you might enjoy. I was reading Teresa’s recap of the Women in Racing luncheon at Aqueduct and followed this link find out more about the documentary that was shown at the luncheon.

While reading about the documentary I noticed this…

For a look at how girls are learning to be bright, knowledgeable women through their affection for horses, take a look at The Girls Horse Club.

I was not one of those 12 year old horse crazy girls. I was into skateboarding and basketball. In fact I mowed lawns, ran errands, had garage sales, etc to save enough money to buy the 1977 30" Alva Pig that’s now in reissue. (I also got Gullwing Phoenix HPG IV trucks, Road Rider 4s and rad pads… for all you late 70s, 12 year old skate crazy kids, like me).

My step-sister and one my best friends were horse crazy girls, and they each had a horse. Both of them were up early before school to go the barn and right back to the barn after school. One rode English and the other Western. They both looooooooved their horses and worked so hard on their riding. I’m convinced it was the kind of devotion only a 12 year old girl can show.

I can’t remember my step-sister’s horses name but my friend Diana’s horse was Chante. I’m not sure what breed she was, but she was grey and not the most friendly of horses. My one memory of Chante was that Di had a sleigh and a couple of times when it snowed she would get it out and we would ride around town at night (we were of legal driving age at this point). Needless to say it was pretty cool riding around in a horse drawn sleigh!

When I got to Girls Horse Club I went right to the blog. The entries are great! All posted by girls, natch. I loved this one, it completely reminded me of Amy (my step-sis) and my friend Diana. Both of them still love horse and still ride and never became “too caught up in fashion to think about horses”.

So, without further adieu, I introduce you to Lady Cloud Devil… my perfect horse!

Note: you’ll need to allow pop-ups to view my perfect horse. I may even go make some more perfect horses.

Go, make a perfect horse, revisit or get to know your inner 12 year old horse crazy girl… and I hope you never become too caught up in fashion to think about horses!

My inner 12 year old just chuckled as I wrote that headline…

Alan’s recent excellent post on gut feelings/over thinking and handicapping inspired the current poll question. I really wanted to do a poll on handicapping style and what y’all use as the most important factors (speed, pace, class, work out patterns, etc) but couldn’t come up with a pithy way to frame it.

My preferred PP is straight up DRF. I haven’t ventured into the pace figs yet and my all Mac home network precludes me from Formulator. My friend Joan likes the Brisnet Premiums with the Prime Power Numbers (or whatever they’re called) but I like to come to those conclusions myself.

I’m still trying to get a real system going with note taking. My current “system” includes keeping all of my scribbled on PPs in several growing piles around my desk. About 80% of the time I remember when I have notes on a race and am able to find said notes. I’ve also gotten better at actually remembering races and trips without the aid of my notes.

My sequence of events are: Handicap, look at ML odds, watch race replays, read/watch race analysis. I don’t always watch race replays or read/watch analysis, but as Alan points out, it usually serves to reinforce what I’ve already decided on… usually.

As a wrap-up for the last poll, Bernardini was your preferred sire for Octave somewhat closely followed by Hard Spun (my choice). Interesting, there were not votes for Any Given Saturday or Street Sense.

During my morning procrastination that involves wandering aimlessly around the internet while sipping tea or snacking, I ended up at Upcoming (formerly Upcoming.org). I have an account there but hadn’t used it in well over a year. It’s part social networking, part promotional vehicle and part community “for discovering and sharing events”.

When last I was there it was a little project run by one person… I even got my first name as my username! They’ve since been bought by Yahoo and considerably jazzed up.

It works in a couple of different ways… you can select places, e.g., NYC, to have all events for that place on your upcoming home page. Anyone can list an event and you can indicate that you are either attending that event or watching it (meaning that you’re interested but perhaps not going). You can watch friend’s events as well. One of the newest features is that you can join and create groups and publish events to groups.

My first search was “horse racing”, natch… and I found listings for the 2008 Breeders’ Cup, Preakness & Belmont! They were listed by Dave, who clearly saw the potential for promotion. Naturally I marked the events accordingly and then started a Thoroughbred Racing Group (and made Dave co-moderator!).

I’ve already listed the NYRA Women in Racing Luncheon for tomorrow (while it’s a bit late, maybe someone will notice it and be on the look out for the next one) and Dave added the TV giveaway at Golden Gate Fields tomorrow. Side note: TV Giveaway?! Now that’s promotion!

So, go join Upcoming, join the Thoroughbred Racing Group and add your local events & races! See you there…

Chris of Female on the Horse & Carol Cedeno at Monmouth Park (Chris Forbes)

As someone who watches their traffic regularly, I had been noticing that jock apprentice Carol Cedeno has been the most frequent search term used to arrive at GbG by way of Google.

How frequent? In the past month I’ve had 34 visits that resulted from searches for the young Miss Cedeno with the next most regular search term, Chantal Sutherland, totaling 5 visits (Saratoga Russell also clocks in with 5). And it’s not like it’s her mother searching over and over again, they’re from all over the place.

Those yearning for more info the popular apprentice lucked out this week when Bloodhorse published an article on her.

Speaking of female jockeys, while trying to scare up a picture for this post I stumbled across the Female on the Horse site. The author of the site (pictured above) works track security and has been compiling a giant archive of interviews of female jockeys!

Also check out his rather impressive photo galleries where his M.O, as demonstrated above, is to get them to pose with him giving the thumbs up.

It sort of reminds me Star Struck by Gary Boas, an astonishing archive of photos of the author with celebrities… also worth checking out as an interesting artifact of fandom & period piece (the photos were taken from the mid-sixties to 1980).

I was just reading today’s Crist Blog post via RSS. I didn’t make it any further than the Landaluce part as I immediately went over to You Tube to see if there were any race replays (not realizing that the lone race replay was in his post).

I only knew of Landaluce because of the Landaluce Stakes so finding out her story was incredible! The subject came up as it was the 25th anniversary of her passing yesterday, the 28th. What a talent. Definitely go check it out if don’t know the story, and if you do, here is the lone race replay currently on You Tube.

While I was at You Tube I noticed a video entitled Hollywood Park Earthquake. It didn’t look to me like the winning horse’s name was Earthquake so I wondered if it really could a race run during an earthquake. When I was visiting Cali in the spring and went to Hollywood Park I wondered what happened if an earthquake occurred during a race…

The call is hilarious. It looks like it really doesn’t matter too much to the horses as long as the earth isn’t opening up on the track. I have to also commend them on steady camera work!

Rafael Bejarano & Precious Kitten winning the Matriarch at Hollywood Park (Charles Pravata)

I was channeling The Church Lady when I typed that headline.

You all read other TBA blogs, right? Download free past performances from the TBA homepage? Yes, I thought so.

Well in that case, you should click on over the TBA homepage and take our series of quick, painless surveys that will help us to help you (well, really help you help horses by getting us more ad money that we can then donate to Old Friends).

Daaher & Midnight Lute in the Cigar Mile (Sarah K. Andrew)

A few days after the Cigar Mile I remembered seeing the headline “Midnite Lute scares away most Cigar Mile Nominees” prior to the race.

It’s too bad they didn’t show up, there were 2 1/2 lengths in between Daaher and Midnight Lute that any number of horses could have fit in. I’d like to think that if I were an owner (something I’d really like to be someday), that I wouldn’t shy away from competition… look at well at worked out for Daaher’s connections.

Channing Hill at Belmont. (Sarah K. Andrew)

The young Mr. Channing Hill had 3 wins, 2 places and 1 show on the Aqueduct card today.

Two of his 3 winners payed $19.40 each! He’s gotten quite a rep for his consistent ability to bring home longer shot horses.

I only saw one of his rides today, the 5th aboard Striking Rizzi. He urged a very game Striking Rizzi to split rivals just in time to get up for the win… very impressive.

Sea Chanter and Mike Smith winning the Miesque Stakes. (Charles Pravata)

Just wanted share this fantastic shot of Sea Chanter, another promising youngster, winning the Miesque Stakes at Hollywood Park.