Who else has been pushed to the edge of their ability? (Sarah K. Andrew)

While having a lovely lunch with a few racing pals the other day, we discussed the past year and decade (along with sports betting, betting on reality TV shows, TV shows in general and the surprising high quality of the pea soup). As the conversation turned to Rachel Alexandra’s spectacular campaign I asked my esteemed colleagues, all long time fans, if they could recall another campaign where a horse was pushed right up to the edge of their ability as Rachel was.

Beyer recently mentioned that he thought Rachel’s campaign was the best for any US based filly:

Her campaign was, in my opinion, the best ever by a U.S.-based filly. The other great fillies of the modern era — such as Ruffian, Personal Ensign, Lady’s Secret and Azeri — made their reputations by dominating members of their own sex but didn’t distinguish themselves against males. Rachel Alexandra challenged males in three Grade I stakes — the Preakness, the Haskell Invitational and the Woodward — and won them all. She trounced Summer Bird, the best male 3-year-old, by six lengths. Overall, she won her eight starts by a combined total of 65 lengths.

After some deliberation and discussion, Ouija Board was mentioned as potentially being pushed to the edge of her ability, but our discussion was cut short by the arrival of the food.

So, I ask you dear readers, can you think of any successful campaigns, where a horse of any class has been challenged more often than not and rose to occasion? What say you?

Remember two days ago when I said this:

If I had a holiday wish this season, it would be to see the industry support it’s own more often and particularly in the high profile circumstances where non-racing related charities tend to get the most support by our industry. Not only would it help raise awareness for the racing related charities, it would probably be some inherent “positive” marketing by showcasing an industry that’s concerned and supportive of it’s equine and human athletes.

An editorial entitled “Out of the Gate” in today’s New York Times is a prime example of why I said it.

When the Kentucky Derby rolls around each year, few ordinary fans are aware of the grisly waste of horseflesh that underpins the self-proclaimed Sport of Kings. One of the unacknowledged traditions of racing has been wholesale neglect of glorious thoroughbreds once their competitive days are done. Notions of happily ever- aftering in the bluegrass are largely myth.

While the editorial makes some fair points it hung a lot of sweeping generalizations on one (horrifying) case (Paraneck Stables). Is there a problem? Yes. Should the industry being doing more to address it? Hell yes. Are there places in the industry already taking measures to address the issues? Yes, and one is cited in the editorial but not without taking a shot:

The crackdown is welcome but late in coming to a multibillion-dollar industry that can make a humane show of ministering to its celebrity champions while gracelessly relegating thousands more to destruction at the bidding of “kill buyers” who work the sport’s fringe.

To make matters more annoying, a friend recently pointed out to me that a non-racing charity that is frequently supported by racing on it’s biggest days, Susan G. Koman “Race for the Cure”, has some corruption issues of it’s own!

But back to racing:

As the upstate scandal spread across the Internet, equine care charities and ordinary people have been helping the victimized horses to sweet resurrection as ranch retirees and recreational companions.

They are shepherded by pioneer protective groups like the Columbia-Greene Humane Society/Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. The foundation has been saving thoroughbreds since 1984, when it began buying horses for rural prisons, to be cared for by minimum-security inmates. “The little guy just wants to run free,” one inmate said of his horse. “And I don’t blame him.”

What I find so galling about the Times editorial is that they fail to give direct mention to places like Another Chance 4 Horses, which actually “broke” the Paragallo story by posting it on their site (from there Paulick picked it up). Yet they cite the (deserving of praise) Columbia-Greene Human Society by name as if they were the only ones involved. As often as the industry fails to support it’s own, the Times minimizes groups within the industry working on the problems, or so it seems to me.

So c’mon owners, tracks and industry organizations, let’s support our own not only big race days but always! Next time you send out a press release check and see if the charities you’re supporting support those within the industry trying to address it’s issues… and perhaps then the New York Times will be forced to editorialize about it!

Update: Upon seeing this tweeted reaction to the NYT editorial and googling, I was pleased to find this passage about some of the excellent things a few tracks are doing to address “aftercare” (as it seems it’s called):

In the area of caring for horses after their careers, Turfway Park has a “surrender stall,” where horsemen can leave horses, “no questions asked.” The track supplies food and hay until the Kentucky Equine Humane Center retrieves the Thoroughbred. Also cited in this area were Woodbine, which commits a percentage of purses to aftercare; the jockeys at Monmouth Park, who commit a percentage of their mount fees; as well as the New York Racing Association tracks and California.

Great stuff, let’s see more of it!

Additional Update: Finely makes a similar point by citing what happened to dog racing in Massachusetts.

It is a cautionary tale for every other animal-related sport that doesn’t do nearly enough to protect its competitors while racing and guarantee them safe, dignified retirements after their careers are over. Sadly, horse racing falls into that category.

Ho Ho Hotb

Sitting around the channel 11 yule log with no racing to watch, I thought I’d take a moment to compose a little blog post as there hasn’t been much going on here at GbG. However, I have managed to choke out a few pieces here and there. Grab some nog and let’s review!

While we’re working on the more fully featured, content rich site at Hello Race Fans we have a nice series going called “Letters to a New Horseplayer“. We’ve asked a wide variety of professional racing folks and regular players to share their thoughts with potential new fans and players.

There’s some great stuff over there and we’ll be rolling out more in the coming months. I recently added mine, which I sort of wrote to myself if I had the ability to go back in time. I would have been really jazzed to stumble upon them as a super-newbie and our hopes for the entire site is to make it easy for potential new fans/players to connect and engage with racing (fingers crossed!).

You’d never know it until today but I’m also participating in the r2 collective, brain-child of Dean from Pull the Pocket. Claire Novak recently took notice of all Dean’s hard work, he’s definitely been on a roll!

His vision for the project is to have a place where industry professionals can look for inspiration, discussion and thought about how better to utilize technology to enable better products, more effective marketing and/or better customer experience. Both Jessica and I have finally starting contributing with the recent series “Top 5 Innovations of the Decade” where we polled a nice panel of independent industry media folk for their top 5 innovations of the decade. We’re up to #2, race replays, which I wrote. Monday we’ll unveil #1.

If you’re a fan of lists and/or compilations, you should keep tabs on Jessica’s list of lists. She’s compiling all of the end of the year/decade posts. There’s quite a few and no doubt there will be more by the end of next week. I won’t be doing one, or at least I’m not planning on it! However, I will have a decade related poll next week.

Thanks to all of you who made your way over to Facebook to vote the many deserving racing charities in the Chase Community Giving project. No racing charities made it to round #2 but a charity frequently supported by racing, the Susan G. Korman “For the Cure”, did make it.

If I had a holiday wish this season, it would be to see the industry support it’s own more often and particularly in the high profile circumstances where non-racing related charities tend to get the most support by our industry. Not only would it help raise awareness for the racing related charities, it would probably be some inherent “positive” marketing by showcasing an industry that’s concerned and supportive of it’s equine and human athletes.

And if Race For Education exists, why can’t something similar be set up to make it easy for owners to donate to safe retirement, injured jockey funds as well as education for family members of backstretch workers (which I think is fantastic, btw).

The way it works is that owners nominate their horse(s) to be part of the program, the owner decides how much of a percentage of their winnings get donated and the horsemen’s bookkeepers make the deductions directly from the purse distributions. Hats off to Race for Education for making it so easy for folks to donate, let’s hope for more inspired industry support in the coming decade!

Also in the inspired giving department, Kevin of Colin’s Ghost (who’s got a nice contribution to the Letter series at HRF!) has decided to use the Hello Race Fans Ad Network as his own form of giving. He’s donating all of his advertising proceeds to the DRF Preservation Fund. We’re happy that’s he’s chosen the HRF network for what can only be described as adver-giving (or is that charity-tizing?)!

And until tomorrow when racing is back in action, enjoy this odd “holiday” clip from the NYC OTB channel. Last year they just had the wreath pictured above but this year they’ve branched out and are toggling between several “wintery”(?) vignettes including ice skating and the New York Harbor. Please note the shaky camera is there’s not mine. Let’s hope this high quality programming is not shades of things to come for New York ADW users. Happy holidays y’all!

For those who think that banks and Facebook are evil, I have news for you… evil+evil=doing some good. At least in the case of Chase Community Giving, which is only available on Facebook!

It can be incredibly powerful when your vote has a local impact. Chase is giving away $5 million to various charities and needs you to help pick which ones. Simply vote for your favorite nonprofit and then get friends and others on Facebook to do the same. Give your charity the recognition it deserves and needs with Chase Community Giving.

Interesting, no? I mean, being on Facebook can’t be ALL time wasting can it? The program allows people to help charities with no financial outlay by giving everyone who installs the app a whopping 20 votes. I haven’t even used all of mine yet!

The distribution is interesting too:

More than 500 nonprofits with an operating budget of $10 million or less will be eligible. The charity receiving the most votes will be awarded $1 million, the top five runners-up will receive $100,000 each, and the 100 finalists, including the top winners, will be awarded $25,000 each.

And, in case you’re starting to wonder if this has anything to do with racing, it does. There are plenty of racing charities vying for part of that $5 million dollars, and they need your help. As I clicked around the other night trying to find them all (not as easy as it seems) I noticed that plenty of the charities listed below only had a few votes and in some cases I was the first person to vote! That’s not too promising considering that I’ve seen a couple with votes in the hundreds (one of them being Old Friends!).

So, for those of you Facebook this is a no brainer… get clicking! And for those of you not on Facebook, now’s your chance to join with the clear conscious that only helping a charity can provide.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this list is not all inclusive, so please leave a comment with a link if you know of any I missed! There’s no browsing mechanism so I was just searching on terms like “thorougbred”, “racehorse” “jockey” “backstretch” etc to see what I could find. While not specifically racing related, I also gave one of my votes to Wikimedia, aka Wikipedia as without Wikipedia I would know a lot less about racing and it’s history.

So, here’s the list… the name of charity links to the page in Facebook to vote for it. I’ve also included a link to the charity’s website where available. If you have a racing charity and are not yet participating, get over and sign up! And then let me know about it so I can add it here.

AC4H

website

Backstretch Clubhouse

more info

Backstretch Education Fund Inc

website

Backstretch Employee Service Team Of New York Inc (BEST)

website

CANTER (IL)

website

CANTER (OH)

website

CANTER (MI)

website

CANTER (NE)

website

CANTER (PA)

website

Disabled Jockey Endowment

Don Macbeth Memorial Jockey Fund

website

Exceller Fund

website

Florida Thoroughbred Charities Inc

website

Friends of Ferdinand

website

Grayson Jockey Club Research Foundation

website

Illinois Equine Humane Center

website

New England Thoroughbred Retirement Center

website

New Vocations Racehorse Adoption

website

Old Friends

website

Permanently Disabled Jockey’s Fund

website

Racehorse Redemption Inc

more info

ReRun

website

Thoroughbred Charities of America

website

Thoroughbred Rehab Center

more info

Thoroughbred Retirement Center

website

Washington Thoroughbred Foundation

more info

“Is blogging dead?” was a question posed by my esteemed colleague John of The Race is not to the Swift. He rightfully points out that other options such as Twitter and Facebook are easier outlets than blogging. Indeed.

I commented that as an example, I had posted several tweets of stuff I encountered while twirling around the web last night and had I not been on Twitter that they would have probably ended up as a blog post. As an experiment, of sorts, here’s what I probably would have written had I not had twitter:

While poking around on Hulu after finding an explanation of a tote board to post over here, I found this interview with Mike Watchmaker on Charismatic’s Triple Crown Bid on Charlie Rose. This made me wonder if Charlie Rose did any interviews prior to Big Brown’s Triple Crown attempt, and alas he did!

Since I didn’t really know much about Charismatic or racing in 1999 in general, I looked a little further. I watched the 1999 Belmont to see if any of Watchmaker’s predictions were right (they were not).

And imagine my surprise when I discovered the Charismatic / Chris Antely story, which I knew nothing about! Upon checking out Charismatic’s wiki page I discovered that an ESPN 30 for 30 episode is currently in development on the Charismatic / Antley story (thanks to @raceday360 for the ESPN link), very exciting! Apparently, there’s also a book on the saga entitled Three Strides Before the Wire (via @BklynBckstretch).

And as if all this wasn’t exciting and interesting enough, Haskin also has a compelling post about trainers who are still working that “once ruled the sport“. A true and proven talent not being able to sell themselves and ending up in relative obscurity is not a new phenomenon and certainly not limited to horse racing. History is littered with examples of artists, writers, musicians, etc who suffered the same fate, but as Jessica put it:

I still look at Turner and marvel, that trainer knows what it is to win the Triple Crown.

Here’s a recent trainee of his, Reforestation, hitting the board at 48-1 in the 2009 Grade 1 Prioress at Belmont.

Turner trains for Castle Village Farms, if money bags owners won’t work with the last trainer to win a Triple Crown there’s no reason why you can’t!

Buddy’s Saint, potential star and confirmed New York hype horse! (Melissa Wirth)

While it was a great long weekend of racing of every kind, I decided to pay more attention to 2yo racing than normal. Thanks to Val of Foolish Pleasure / Fillies First for alerting me to the Stars of Tomorrow card on closing day of Churchill, there were definitely some notable performances there.

In my opinion it’s too early to hop on any bandwagons for Kentucky Derby 2010 but it’s never to soon to put a horse in your watch list! Here’s what caught my eye this weekend generally speaking, not necessarily just from a Derby perspective.

Carrington Village – Debut Winner at Churchill 11/26th, 8th race:

This gets my vote for most impressive effort overall and most impressive win. He pulls an Evening Attire out of the gate (#5), and remains unhurried down the backstretch. Coming very wide into the stretch he made up ground quickly and once he cleared the leaders Desormeaux stopped asking and he kept right on going. I’m looking forward to seeing what this McPeek trainee does next out.

Down with Dixie – 3rd in a MSW at Churchill on 11/28th, 7th race:

Watch gate 11, Down with Dixie stumbles and then gets squeezed out. He drops in at the back of the pack and you’ll see him start his run on the outside going into the far turn (white hat). Fly Down’s effort should be noted too, but I thought Down with Dixie was the more impressive. However, both showed that they can deal with traffic and that they have heart. While that was Down With Dixie’s 5th start it’s only his 2nd start on dirt, a surface he definitely seems to like more than than synth. It was Fly Down’s second start and first time with blinkers.

Sassy Image – Golden Rod at Churchill

Sassy Image sat off a solid pace and came wide to duel with a game Decelerator but had enough left to kick at the end and look great doing it. She’s owned by Dale Roman’s brother, who was advised by Roman’s precocious son Jake to shot a with her.

Super Saver – Kentucky Jockey Club at Churchill

If it wasn’t for Williams Kitten putting in a decent run himself you’d think the rest of the field was just falling off but Super Saver, who was getting leg weary going into the stretch, kicked again after setting solid fractions. I think this Winstar colt’s win was more impressive than American’s Lion Hollywood Prevue.

Buddy’s Saint – Remsen at Aqueduct

While Buddy’s Saint was nothing to sneeze at, I think Super Saver’s performance was more impressive. Buddy’s Saint sat behind a dawdling pace and was the beneficiary of a front end hook up between Homeboykris (who should definitely learn to rate!) and Citrus Kid. Yes, Buddy’s Saint did it insanely easily, but I’d like to see him overcome adversity before I get super jazzed… the good news is that there’s plenty of time for that!

Tizahit – Demoiselle at Aqueduct

Similar to Buddy’s Saint, Tizahit was the recipient of a very patient ride and a pace meltdown up front, this time courtesy of Oh Diane. What was more impressive about Tizahit’s win was 1) the pace was faster than in the Remsen and 2) she held off closing rivals in Protesting and Fuzzy Britches. And not to pick too much on American Lion but in my opinion Tizahit was the more impressive Tiznow offspring of the two of them this time out.

It was also interesting to note the difference in coverage between Super Saver and Buddy’s Saint. I thought the Super Saver article at DRF seemed almost too understated compared to the Buddy’s Saint article which was lavishly entitled “Buddy’s Saint sure looks like a Derby Contender”. Within the same article the sub-head for Tizahit was “Tizahit gets dream trip”… and Buddy’s Saint didn’t? It’s interesting to note the difference in reporting both between reporters and even between very similar races by the same reporter.

Update: Here’s another you can file under ‘it’s only just begun’, The Saint Makes a Heavenly Statement. I’d have to do a little research before I named what I thought was the best performance by 2yo male all year but I’d take Carrington Village’s debut win of the ones I have listed here!

Not to continue to rain on the parade but Crist provides some fractional comparisons between all the Aqueduct races from Saturday:

The Demoiselle was slow-early/fast-late while the Remsen was the reverse. Buddy’s Saint was not under pressure winning the Remsen but any enthusiasm for his 4 3/4-length victory has to be tempered by his unimpressive final furlong of 13.49 and final three-eighths in about 39.50.

And here are two more the list, Dan Ilman points out Conveyance winning an allowance at Hollywood Park and Val points out Maximus Ruler.

At any rate, a special thanks to Churchill for making ALL of their replays available AND embeddable on YouTube!

Stardom Bound returning from an 8 month layoff in a G1 on a new surface, nice! (Jason Moran)

Ok, four… Pyro and Stardom Bound.

Thanks for the memories, I still love ya!

Pyro – 2008 Risen Star:

Pyro – 2008 Louisana Derby:

Pyro – 2009 Forego:

Stardom Bound – 2008 Del Mar Debutante:

Stardom Bound – 2008 Oak Leaf:

Stardom Bound – 2008 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies:

Stardom Bound – 2009 Las Virgines:

Stardom Bound – 2009 Santa Anita Oaks:

Just like the holiday lights that went up in my neighborhood a week and a half before Halloween, it seems as though the Derby hype has gotten under way, thus far this year in the form of American Lion. Almost all of the coverage of Hollywood Prevue has been focused almost exclusively on the winner, American Lion, while noticeably overlooking the second the place finisher Get My Fix. Was I watching the same race?

Sure, American Lion handled the class jump, but did he really tame his foes? All of the articles do a good job of mentioning that he was a bit green/unfocused and that there’s time (before the Derby!) to get those issues ironed out, but isn’t it a little early to put all your eggs in one basket? I thought Get My Fix ran a much better race.

Get My Fix didn’t look green at all biding his time at the back of the back and then closing aggressively at the end. Why not ask Joe Talamo what he thought of the effort? I did! Although I doubt he’ll answer me… but if he does I’ll let you know!

But back to my point, I don’t mind the beginning of some Derby coverage at this time of the year. In fact, I think this is the first year where I’ve really started to pay attention to the Juvies with an eye towards next year. Along the same lines Davidowitz has a good DRF+ post on his end of the year observations about the current crop of 2yos. But if you read the news coverage of the Hollywood Prevue without watching race, you might get the impression that American Lion’s effort was more impressive than it really was… or at least than it seemed to me. Solid? Yes. Promising? Sure. Best in the race? Not in my opinion.

It could also be that American Lion is by Tiznow and Get My Fix is by Posse, even I know that means that Get My Fix is less likely to get the classic distance, or depending on how you look at it, be a “failed router” (aka sprinter/miler). And let’s not overlook American Lion’s maiden race at Keeneland, which was impressive, but how have the rest of them come out of that race? Oh, and Eoin Harty does seem to do well with a Tiznow from Winstar. But does the coverage have read like a Winstar press release?

In the end American Lion could turn out be the better horse, only time will tell. And only time will tell if Get My Fix can stretch out or not. If he doesn’t it wouldn’t be so horrible to have another Kodiak Kowboy to look forward to! Regardless of whether he’s “distance challenged” or not, and regardless of whether he ends up on the Derby trail, I’m looking forward to Get My Fix’s next out. If nothing else he’ll certainly be a better value than American Lion!

I see #11, #10, #9, #5, #4 and #2! (EVENT OF THE YEAR PHOTOS)

It’s getting to be that time of the year, the time for year end polls! Thoroughbred Times unveiled theirs today and it’s pretty good. Last week they asked for some feedback and ideas on Twitter and my suggestion became question 14!

But the three answers on the Thoroughbred Times poll aren’t the only fan friendly moves that took place this year. In fact, I would argue it was a great year to be racing fan. Plenty of talent racing? Check. Exciting and down right historical races? Yep. The industry remembering that owners and breeders are not their only customers? Indeed and a welcome trend it is.

In no particular order other than as they came to me, here’s what I came up with so far, let me know in the comments what else I’ve missed. There could even be more! I didn’t include Churchill’s night racing because of the complaints of the ticket price ($10). But, if you think it belongs in the poll let me know.

BC saddle cloth standardization

Some people didn’t like this while others gave it the big “eh”. This is actually my vote for most player friendly move. I know it helped me to be able to tell who was who both in the warm up and the races.

BC ticket prices

It’s always nice not to be gouged! This move received plenty of positive response in the form of “it’s about time” (the horseplayers version of positive feedback?). It seems to have worked since attendance was up 11%!

BC online ticket sales

It seems so simple yet so few do it, moving ticket sales online might have also helped with the attendance increase. Should I be filling out my Saratoga form yet? Where’s that pen?

CD/KEE/FG in HD

Several tracks started broadcasting their simulcast signals in HD this year and Allicansayiswow! Seriously, this game was meant to be broadcast in HD and not to harp on a point (stage whisper) all the other sports are doing it.

YouBet My ROI

If you don’t have a YouBet account you’re missing out on some serious metrics. With a single click you can determine your ROI by track, bet type, surface, race type, breed, distance, trainer and jockey/driver. I seriously hope this feature is rolled into TwinSpires. TwinSpiresTV + My ROI = perfection.

@BH_RaceResults

Oh ye of little Twitter faith are missing a handy Twitter stream provided by Bloodhorse that provides race results from what seems to be every track. Each result also links to a handy race result page on the Bloodhorse site that provides results, payouts, pedigree information and replays where available.

DRF’s Digitized Archive

The beginnings of the DRF’s outstanding digital archive was rolled out by the Keeneland Library this year. Obviously this is an incredible and important source available for all to use, for free… so feel free to donate while you’re whiling away the hours over there!

DRF Ticketmaker

Making tickets for multi-race exotics is a giant pain, but thanks to DRF you can now get a little help! I don’t get that fancy with the multi-race wagers but the few times I did it took freakin’ forever to make the tickets, and that time is better spent making actual handicapping decisions.

Equibase Scratches Today

We have our pals at HANA to thank for the next two entries. Through their hard work and perseverance on behalf of players everywhere, Equibase now provides real time scratches! Another one to file under “it’s about time”.

Bris/Equibase Free Historical Charts

And finally, some free data for the people! Sure one can quibble that Bris requires a credit card AND your social security number to open an account (and to add insult to injury the SS# is for forgotten password verification! feel free to use a fake SS# when registering, just write it down in case you forget your password! FAIL.). But back to the data, say it with me everyone… “it’s about time!”.

Three cheers and keep up the good work to all in the industry who have pushed for and succeeded in getting innovations and change on behalf of fans and players. THANK YOU!

In our last poll about Lava Man being back in training, the majority of you were cautiously optimistic and jazzed about stem cells. This poll started off in a dead heat. Up until about 16 votes in each category it could have gone to any of the answers. He still hasn’t raced so we’ll just continue to be cautiously optimistic and know that at the very least he’s probably more happy training than hanging out in the pasture.

As always, thanks!

Update – Late Entry!

TwinSpires Cancel Bet

I KNEW I was forgetting something! How many times have you wished you could cancel a bet? (and I’m not talking about after the race!) Of course, the first time I used this featured the bet I canceled ended up being the winning exacta, but that doesn’t mean the feature isn’t innovative and fan friendly!

Bobby Frankel and Stardom Bound (Marcie Heacox)

Just a quick note to pay respects and mention the passing of Hall of Famer Bobby Frankel. Condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. Even when you know it’s coming, it doesn’t make it any easier.

I’ll resume semi-regular posting soon(ish!).