Must Oaklawn Settle for Half a Loaf?

Miss Kratchnut, ring up those world-record folks at Guinness. They need to know that a record was set when the sound of a groan traveled 450 miles, from Hot Springs, Arkansas, to New Orleans. Another record may also have been set: A man complaining after he saved four and a half million dollars.

The new entry, under horse racing, should read: Cella, Charles, owner of Oaklawn Park race track, etc., etc. Tell them one of their sub-editors can fill in the rest. The part about the four and a half mill isn't for sure, it should be confirmed by April 9, but the groan was not only the farthest, it was also the loudest. Bartenders on Bourbon Street thought they had been hit by an earthquake.

Ready for Her Closeup

It's hard to believe that it's been almost 30 years since Gato Del Sol won the Kentucky Derby. Hard to believe, too, that it's been nearly 10 years since Gato Del Sol's congenial trainer, Eddie Gregson, killed himself, by handgun, only a few hours after he had saddled a couple of horses at Hollywood Park. Gregson drove cross-town from the track to his home, had a drink with his wife Gail and their good friend Trudy McCaffery, and then said he was going to his Pasadena office to catch up on a few things. They found multiple suicide notes near Gregson's body.

Gregson got back to the Derby only once after Gato Del Sol's 21-1 win in 1983; he saddled Candi's Gold, another longshot, for an eighth-place finish in 1987. A grandson of Candi's Gold, Alphie's Bet, won the Sham Stakes at Santa Anita and immediately became one of those out-of-the-weeds horses that become, most times for just a heartbeat, a blip on the Kentucky Derby radar. Alphie's Bet is trained by Alexis Barba, who was Gregson's assistant at the time of his death. I wonder if Barba ever gets mail intended for Alexis Barbara, a model, wannabe actor and daughter of a South Florida plutocrat. You would not confuse them on the street. Barbara is 23, Barba is 55. Barbara is a size two and Barba. . . well, you get the idea.

Pletcher Gets Super Saver Started at Tampa

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY, March 13, 2010--Today’s G3 Tampa Bay Derby is interesting and figures tell Kentucky Derby fans much of what they need to know about major player Super Saver, winner of the key-race Jockey Club Stakes in his juvenile finale at Churchill Downs, a rapidly run mile and a sixteenth that produced two next-out winners.

If today were the first Saturday in May, Super Saver would be a clear choice in this lineup. Proven in top company, his excellent performance figure in his final start at 2 is the basis for his being the best horse under today’s conditions, especially when considering the normal growth horses experience from age 2 to 3.

That is a successful handicapping dictum but it is never a given in every situation. Super Saver has been training right along over the past six weeks at his Pam Meadows base, and it’s a wonderful surface over which to leg-up for a return from the bench.

Given that the colt is on a two-race prep schedule, the assumption is that Todd Pletcher will have him absolutely fit to race. But being fit, as opposed to super-sharp and ready for best, is another matter entirely. This is about more than just being fresh.

New York Horsemen, Racing Director Caught in Cost-Cutting Crossfire

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY, March 12, 2010--While trainer Bob Baffert was being questioned on Tuesday’s teleconference relative to the condition of Lookin At Lucky, who makes his season’s debut tomorrow in Oaklawn Park’s Rebel Stakes, the interview was interrupted.

“Sorry, but I have to jump in here, it’s Bob Kulina,” vice president and general manager at Monmouth Park. After a brief friendly exchange, Kulina invited Baffert to send a string of horses to Monmouth for its upcoming purse-inflated meet.

“I want Pletcher’s barn,” quipped Baffert.

“You can have whatever you want,” assured Kulina.

This is known as kidding on the square. Kulina would love to have a string of Baffert horses on his backside. And, as everyone knows, it wouldn’t take much coaxing to get the Hall of Famer out of California and on an Eastern-based dirt racetrack.

Across the river, meanwhile, Director of Racing Paul J. Campo has the exact same concerns, only in reverse. He will have trainers lined up three deep looking for stalls when Belmont Park opens its summer meet. The problem, however, is where to put them.

Beyond Provincialism, Audacious Monmouth Plan a Blueprint for Saving an Industry?

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY, March 9, 2009--If New York racing knows what’s good for it, and if the racing industry in general wants to grow instead of subsisting, withering and, eventually, disappearing, it had better wish Monmouth Park and New Jersey racing all the luck in the world.

Virtually since the day after hosting the Breeders’ Cup, Monmouth Park and its horsemen began thinking about a new model that would ensure its existence going forward. Like every other racetrack in this country, big and small, it’s in survival mode.

But that’s what happens when you fall out of favor, are no longer a part of the fabric, and betting revenue drops nearly 25 percent in the last two years. To be provincial about Monmouth’s grand experiment this summer would miss the point at best, myopic at worst.

This is bigger than whether Monmouth can effectively compete in a racing environment in which it finds itself surrounded on all sides by slots-infused competition. It is bigger than seeing how negatively Monmouth Park’s incursion into the high end of the “good horse circuit” negatively impacts Saratoga Race Course this summer.

And so all with a vested interest in this industry needs to root for New Jersey to succeed in 2010. If it doesn’t, there won’t be a 2011 in the Garden State. If it doesn’t, then the rest of racing has no future, either. Monmouth Park has created a new paradigm, a model that finally--finally--addresses the state of the modern game.

As Monmouth Park vice president and general manager, Bob Kulina, and trainer John Forbes, president of the New Jersey Horsemen’s Association, expressed so clearly on an NTRA conference call Tuesday afternoon, the public has spoken: “Racing has got to change.”

“We’ve gone from a local sport to a national sport with simulcasting,” explained Forbes. “Fans want larger fields and better horses. We decided to concentrate on the big picture rather than worry about the provincial aspect, focus on what the customer wants.

Rachel v. Zenyatta: Where’s the Network Coverage?

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY, February 25, 2010--To paraphrase a convalescing Vito Corleone from Godfather I, who admitted to liking wine more than he used to, I feel the same way about the winter Olympics: Well, I’m watching it more, anyway.

Back in the day, I felt the same way present-day sports talkers feel: How modern era Olympics exist as a made-for-TV event, appealing to a contrived sense of patriotic nationalism performed by pro athletes, not the amateurs of yesteryear.

You could easily blame the old Communist bloc countries for that, especially the U.S.S.R., for subsidizing the Olympic program so their athletes could train full time to earn propaganda points they believed Gold medals provided.

Finally, when we sent Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Christian Laettner, Karl Malone, Chris Mullin, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson and John Stockton to Barcelona to play basketball in 1992, all pretense of amateurism was gone forever.

The age of innocence is long gone, too, and so is the time we ask modern day athletes to perform athletic feats that once were the purview of mere mortals. It’s not so much that modern athletes are better, which they are, but technology has made the achieving of excellence that much more difficult.

Forget about whether you think that Snowboarding or the Biathlon or Aerial Skiing are legitimate sports. The more relevant question is why would athletes subject themselves to such risks.

Was there really a need for the world’s fastest luge run? And won’t there will be a point where humans cannot ski jump any farther, traverse a Giant Slalom faster or perform a quintuple axel from the time you leave the ice until the time you return?

Anyway, I was thinking about all this as I watched the Olympics last week and this on NBC when late last week it occurred to a friend of mine to ask: “Where are the ads for the $5-million Apple Blossom starring Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta?

BIG 12 TOURNAMENT PREVIEW

PROJECTED FINAL FOUR:
Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri and Texas

THE WAY WE SEE IT:
The NCAA committee will probably hand out invitations to seven Big 12 schools, but can any of them be trusted in this event? KANSAS does arrive with some gaudy offensive and defensive numbers but their rusty 2-11 ATS mark with 3 or more days of rest this season is cause for concern. So is their 1-5 ATS record over their last six tourney games. After last year’s opening round loss to Baylor, expect the Jayhawks to be all business. HC Bill’s Self’s 14-3 ATS post-season log against a foe off a SU dog win ensures that.

SEC TOURNAMENT PREVIEW

PROJECTED FINAL FOUR:
Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Mississippi State

THE WAY WE SEE IT:
KENTUCKY enters as the No. 1 seed for the first time since 2005 and we’ll look for them to continue their dominant play in this event. Since 1992, the Wildcats are 38-8 SU and 31-13-2 ATS, including an amazing 28-8-1 ATS as favorites of more than four points in this tourney. The top rebounding team (+10.6 margin) in the land also brings the nation’s 7th-stingiest Defensive Field Goal Percentage (36.1). That combo is a formula for SU and ATS success.