As Good As It Gets, Gets You Nowhere

(CHICAGO, IL – February 8, 2010) The newspapers saved space in their weekend editions to criticize the appointment of Aqueduct Entertainment Group as the operator of New York’s next VLT casino. The unflattering press began in Friday’s New York Times with a 500-word desk-written essay accusing Gov. David Paterson of putting personal gain ahead of public considerations. By Sunday, Glenn Blain of the Albany Bureau of the New York Daily News gave heft to the point by getting Peter Kiernan, the governor’s top lawyer, to concede that the selection was influenced by politics.

“I’m surprised that the bidders who weren’t named are not screaming more than they are,” said Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, chairman of the Racing and Wagering Board, according to Blain. Angry losers in the bidding process claimed the process required them to continuously adjust their proposals and raise the ante. It was only when Paterson had gotten all that he could from the exercise that he called an end to it. Perhaps this is what has been going on for the nine years that horse racing in the State has been dangling.

The winning AEG team has ties to a Mercedes-driving clergyman from Queens, NY, the borough in which “Aqueduct Raceway,” which is how both papers referred to the racetrack in numerous articles, resides. Rev. Floyd Flake’s Darman Group joins the Navigante Group, led by Larry J. Woolf, former Chairman, CEO and President of MGM Grand Hotels in Las Vegas, and a bevy of local construction companies. There are no people in horse racing involved.

On the record, the New York Racing Association has been non-committal about which group of bidders it preferred. All it really wanted was to get a decision. The VLT casino at Aqueduct is projected to take in $6 billion annually and NYRA’s cut of that amount is seven percent. The windfall should create plenty for purses, upkeep, marketing and much needed renovations at Saratoga and Belmont Park. Note, however, the key word in that statement is “should.”

The Week That Was

(CHICAGO, IL – February 1, 2010) The controversy engine that powers a comatose horse racing industry and causes constipated turf writers to move their vowels was unusually static this past week. There was news, yes - although, for the most part, it avoided the criticism, doom and gloom, frustration and resignation of other weeks. Some of the past week’s developments, in fact, brought a smile to the face.

Take, for example, the revelation that $500,000 was won by a 61-year-old accountant named Brian Troop from Barrie, Ontario, Canada in the DRF/NTRA National Handicapping Championship. That seems like a lot of money for something as mundane as horse picking, but that’s how much dough the lucky Troop got. These days a half million bucks may not be enough to change a man’s life but it’s enough to ask why the racetracks don’t hold a contest like this every day to boost attendance. It was a good show all around for the folks that participated in and those that put on the event. Bravo!

The week that was also produced Champs Elysees as the Sovereign Awards' Horse of the Year. Such a dubious honor would have left Bobby Frankel embarrassed. In addition, the past seven days ushered in the first of the Top Derby Horses lists. This annual tradition enables ego-centered “assperts” to impart their consensus-inspired views on which horses are most likely to enter the Churchill Downs starting gate for the featured stakes on the first Saturday in May. Heck, nobody knows on the last Saturday in January what steeds might step forward to race for the roses, of course, but that isn’t stopping anyone, including yours truly, from making a fool of himself now. Stay tuned for HorseRaceInsider’s version of the embarrassing prognostication this Wednesday.

Speaking of fools, New York Gov. David Paterson announced that he selected the Queens-based Aqueduct Entertainment Group to build and operate the Aqueduct VLT casino and AEG says it’ll take only six months to open the doors of the palace of one-armed bandits. As everyone knows, it’s taken the State almost nine years to proceed with the project and Sen. Sheldon Silver, an enemy of the sport, wants to add more time on top of it. For the time being, however, there’s reason to rejoice – that’s of course, if you want horse racing on life support. Not everyone does, mind you.

The 77% Non-Solution

Zenyatta got 77% of the turf writers' Horse of the Year vote--the vote by West Coast turf writers, that is. But the West Coast is under-represented among the turf writers who vote--82% come from outside California, Nevada, Washington and Western Canada--so as a result Rachel Alexandra still dominated this bloc, just as she dominated the entire election.

Of the three Eclipse Awards voting groups, the turf writers are the only bloc that publishes how each individual votes. The Daily Racing Form and the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, which is heavy with racing secretaries from member tracks, keep their votes private.

Lemon Drop Kid Deserves a Look

It's the time of the year when the Racing Hall of Fame's nominating committee begins thinking about which horses and horsemen deserve to be on the ballot that's sent out to voters in a couple of months. I'd like to see the committee consider Lemon Drop Kid. Should The Kid ever make the ballot, he's one of those horses whose vote-getting is deeply dependent on the appeal of the horses going against him. Which is one of the flaws in the system, but as you Americans put it, c'est la vie.

In another time, Lemon Drop Kid probably wouldn't even deserve a Hall of Fame look. He lost more races than he won, was never a Horse of the Year, got only 14 votes against Tiznow for Horse of the Year in 2000, and finished his career with lackluster efforts in two spotlight races. If Point Given returns to the ballot (he lost out to Tiznow last time), I wouldn't give Lemon Drop Kid a chance in hell, but what seems to count in Hall of Fame voting is just getting nominated; many voters have a tendency to return to candidates who can't turn the trick the first time around (Tiznow, to my surprise, was outvoted by Manila in 2008).

The Curse

Congratulations Steve Asmussen, you officially lost the 2010 Kentucky Derby! Well, the odds were against you to begin with, but especially now.

Eclipse Award-winning trainers, in recent history, don’t win roses, don’t buy roses, aren’t fit to say, ‘Stop and smell the roses.’ In the last decade, three conditioners have been named Champion Trainer—think about that—Asmussen, Todd Pletcher, and the late Bobby Frankel: two, four, and four.

Going back nearly 20 years to 1993, only six different trainers have won the award. When you’re hot, you’re hot.

The last trainer to win the Derby in the year he was named Champion Trainer was Bob Baffert in 1998 with Real Quiet, the same year he missed the Triple Crown by a booger.

Nineteen ninety-seven was the last year a trainer, also Baffert, won the Champion Trainer award and then went on to win the Derby the following year. That doesn’t seem that long ago, but that was thirteen years now gone.

Since the Eclipse Awards’ conception in 1971, just 18 trainers out of 39 renewals have won the award. Frankel has won the most (five) with Pletcher, Laz Barrera, and D. Wayne Lukas sit one back.

Eighteen Kentucky Derby’s spread out among the eighteen trainers over 39 years.

Here’s the decade-by-decade breakdown:

Now this is a rivalry

Now there is a rivalry.

For anyone who has had a chance to see Jess Jackson’s acceptance speech for Rachel Alexandra winning the 2009 Horse of the Year award, you know it’s on now.
All you had to do was look to the face of Jerry Moss during the frequent cutaways. The look on his face said it all.

1. I’m not pleased that I lost.
2. I don’t like you that much.
3. See you in 2010.

His face lacked all joy. His jaw was locked so tight you could hear his teeth cracking. His jaw was so squared off you could have forged Excaliber on it. Though nobody with any inkling of intelligence would say that, ‘Aha! Zenyatta is no longer unbeaten,’ Moss still defended her with an edge that could blunt a diamond.

In One Fell Swoop, A Dish Fit for the Gods

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY, February 4, 2010--At 10 a.m. this morning, CST, Charles J. Cella is expected to make an announcement “regarding one of the greatest stakes in our 106-year history.”

Cella, who will celebrate his 74th birthday Travers weekend, in his youth was a nationally ranked squash player but today serves as president of Southern Real Estate and Financial Company.

He is, of course, better known as the third generation owner of Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

One of the first things you notice about Cella when you meet him is that his attitude and bearing is replete with proper elegance and flair.

So it is no surprise that this morning he would throw an invitation-only media party in his trackside restaurant surrounded by members of the Oaklawn Jockey Club to make a grand announcement.

Somehow I don’t believe the reason is to thank the Graded Stakes Committee for recognizing the Arkansas Derby as a Grade 1 event, something it has been for several years now, sans official portfolio.

And it’s also highly unlikely he would add “and about time, too.” That just isn’t the way Charles Cella rolls.

Sunshine Millions Still Setting a Hot Pace

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NT, January 30, 2010--Following a negative trend--which people of good conscience try to reverse but lack the power or means necessary to do so- the Sunshine Millions, alas, ain’t what it used to be. But what is?

And don’t blame this one on Frank Stronach. This was and remains a terrific idea, a handle bonanza from Day 1, an event that received hours of television coverage--network television courage--even if Frank (read shareholders) had to pay for it himself.

While the concept cynically might be described as being a bit sophomoric--pitting Florida-bred horses vs. California-bred horses, begging the question, why?--it nonetheless was a novel notion.

The Sunshine Millions, like the Magna 5, might not have fired up the imagination of the masses but it certainly warmed it up. Horseplayers love it for it’s quality and betability. And the event is still plenty good enough.

You can do good things when you own two tracks that run concurrently, tracks that happen to lead the industry at this time of the year; Santa Anita Park and Gulfstream Park.

So it would be Florida-breds vs. Cal-breds, the races closely interspersed with each other so that they alternate with each other rat-a-tat-tat. In the gambling business you learn that when conducting events sequentially, you quicken the pace and the pulse, which heightens the excitement level and grows the betting handle.

From day one, the Sunshine Millions worked on every level. With purses for the series of races, a like number at each track, totaling millions, it got great support from the horsemen, plenty of pub from the racing press, and huge support at the windows.