Saturday, March 13, 2010
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.
Today’s switch to the quiet hands of the great Ramon Dominguez indicates two things: This can be a Derby audition and/or the spot for Pletcher and the Winstar people to determine whether Super Saver can be just as effective from off the early pace.
After all, there are no shortage of top Pletcher contenders that have done their best racing on the lead. Pletcher won this race in 2004 with Limehouse, which subsequently finished fourth in that year‘s Derby.
If you haven’t seen a replay of the Sam F. Davis Memorial, Tampa’s prep for its signature event, you cannot know just how far the blinkers moved up late blooming Schoolyard Dream.
Derek Ryan’s trainee made a bold, albeit premature, mid-race run at the fast and hickory-game Rule, looking like a winner for a brief instant before the Pletcher colt showed his class and courage, withstanding the challenge before drawing away.
The Ryan camp might be thinking of waiting a bit longer before having their colt make his move this time, hiring Jeremy Rose to replace the more aggressive Cornelio Velasquez. ‘Dream’s’ half-mile blowout for this, termed breezing, was the fastest of 102 three-year-olds to work in Oldsmar, Florida that week.
This outfit knows something about winning this Derby prep, having won it last year with Musket Man. Owner Eric Fein also won the Tampa Derby in 2008 with New York-bred Big Truck, so you know Schoolyard Dreams has been seriously pointed this way.
Of course, this is about more than just these two horses. The uber impressive Odysseus won a prep for this by 15 lengths on this ground for Tom Albertrani, another Tampa Derby-winning trainer, with Deputy Glitters in 2006.
Odysseus never has taken a backward step in three career starts, has an all important prep over the track, has Rajiv Maragh on the re-ride and goes postward for a barn that’s not only historically profitable in graded stakes, but is 36 percent efficient with its third-off-the-layup starters. There’s a chance that he might be a special colt.
Local hero Uptowncharlybrown goes long for the second time in his career. Equipped with blinkers for the first time, he blew out sharply from the gate, has drawn the pole and retains Tampa’s leading rider, Daniel Centeno. Don’t be too surprised if he winds up on the lead this time, at least for some portion of the trip.
Another trainer that won the Tampa Bay Derby before is Nick Zito, looking for his second score with the late developing Tuvia’s Force.
Zito, who won this race with Sun King in 2005, has this colt rockin’ and rollin’ on recent Palm Meadows mornings. Tuvia’s Force blew out a half-mile for this in :47-flat, breezing. It was the fastest of 178 three-year-old workers at the Boynton Beach facility last week.
Written by John Pricci
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Friday, March 12, 2010
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.
While most horsemen in New York know it to be a fait accompli for some time, no official announcement has been made that stabling horses at Aqueduct Race Track is a thing of the past. At least immediately, anyway.
At the conclusion of the current Aqueduct spring meet, the backside of the South Ozone Park facility will be cleared out, never again to be opened for training. When and if it will be again is the stuff of conjecture at this point.
Further, and contrary to previously printed reports, the highly controversial detention barn will remain in place. Beginning with the Aqueduct fall meet, horses stabled in New York will ship to Queens from Belmont Park.
The local horses, as well as out-of-town shippers, will be housed in the detention barn as they have been for the past several years.
There are many prominent outfits currently stabled at Aqueduct, those of Gary Contessa, Rick Dutrow, and Rick Violette, to name just a few. There are countless others working with much less stock stabled there as well.
Once Aqueduct’s barn-area closing is made official, Campo will need to find room for approximately 375 more horses at Belmont Park, meaning there will be more horses than stalls. In better times this would be a good problem to have. Not so now.
Weather permitting, Saratoga’s Oklahoma training track, which normally opens in mid-April, could open as early as April 1 this year, weather and logistics permitting. That will alleviate some of the problem, though it’s hard to envision how that will help the smaller outfits.
In order to achieve a workable situation distribute Belmont’s stalls equitably, Campo will need to cap the number of stalls allowed each trainer. Thirty-two, or 35, sound like workable numbers for the larger operations.
The little guy also will be cut, in proportion, making it fair for everyone. Sadly, the situation is what it is.
Anyone who follows racing at Aqueduct this winter knows that field size has taken a significant hit, no matter how inventive Campo has been taking pen to condition book, not including the extra races that comprise a typical card.
This has not been a problem in recent years but that’s racing’s new reality, in New York and everywhere where there’s an extended meet in place. Losing both detention barns would provide valuable stall space and save money, a commodity in very short supply.
The shuttering of Aqueduct‘s backside and the cuts in maintenance and security staffing is expected to save the NYRA several millions this year.
Nine out of 10 trainers want the detention barns gone, too, as does Campo and NYRA president Charlie Hayward. But NYRA Board Chairman Steven Duncker wants it to remain in place. Duncker won out.
Presently there is no shortage of horseflesh in New York, per se, yet Campo has had difficulty finding quality winter-horses to fill races. What happens when Monmouth and Delaware reopens can‘t make things any easier.
Whether Campo imposes a ban on the shipping of claiming and allowance stock is anyone‘s guess at this point. If he allows horses to ship back in after shipping out to race, isn’t he cutting New York racing’s throat, as well as his own? So, what’s the alternative?
For New York racing to proceed as smoothly as possible, the NYRA must formally announce their plans for the closing of the Aqueduct backstretch. Horsemen need to know whether they have a future here, and the secretary needs to know what he has on the grounds before he can write a condition book, or even the extras.
The lack of VLTs and upside-down balance sheets are not the only problems that need an immediate fix.
Written by John Pricci
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Thursday, March 11, 2010
Not Everyone’s Rooting for Monmouth Park
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY, March 11, 2010--While most reasonable people without provincial interest are rooting that Monmouth Park has created a template by which racing will not only survive but even thrive in the future, the smart money is betting against.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, highly placed industry sources are telling HRI there is no way Monmouth Park can reasonably expect to double its handle, something it would need to do to remain viable, given a purse structure that will distribute an average $1-million daily.
The facet that seems clear given the new approach, accenting both quantity
and quality, is that Monmouth should have little problem improving its live gate, drawing fans and bettors from the densely populated metropolitan area while New York’s horses are in Saratoga.
This makes sense in that the few tracks that are thriving in this country specialize. Saratoga and Del Mar are destination tracks, summer places to be for racing fans and bettors from America’s two largest markets.
While less of a destination track per se, Keeneland works because it owns the highest octane race meet in North America, racing for only three weeks each spring and fall.
And Oaklawn Park, meanwhile, with the exception of its impressive Racing Festival of the South concept, thrives not only because it’s become a racino but because it draws patrons from five states: Location, location, location.
More than any other sporting group, horseplayers are creatures of habit. Summer betting eyes are focused on Saratoga and Del Mar, and always have been in the modern era. Arlington Park’s summer signal is very popular because of its extensive turf program. Monmouth has its moments, but its weekday fare is, on balance, pedestrian.
In that context, purse money will help big-time. New York outfits such as Todd Pletcher’s, Kiaran McLaughlin’s, Bruce Levine’s, Linda Rice’s, and Rick and Tony Dutrow’s will have strong divisions at the Shore, as they do most years. Given the added money, however, they will probably ramp up their participation in 2010.
But the big New York outfits might not find the pickings as easy this time. The large purses are sure to attract an influx of competitive horses from Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Money, as racetrackers often say, makes the mare go.
The impact that this infusion of equine and human talent will have on New Jersey horsemen could be devastating. They will have to choose from a limited amount of opportunities more carefully, perhaps even point towards the 22 days after Labor Day than the 58 days that precede it.
While Monmouth Park vice president and general manager Bob Kulina and newly elected New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association president John Forbes presented a united front at an NTRA-sponsored conference call Tuesday, there was infighting before the plan was brought to fruition.
Forbes was one of three trainers, Tim Hills** and Jim Ryerson being the other two HBPA board members, who was not on board with the plan because all felt it wasn’t in the best interests of New Jersey horsemen.
The one person who was on board, however, was newly elected Governor Chris Christie. Christie inherited not only the waning fortunes of the thoroughbred and breeding game but a tanking casino industry in Atlantic City as well.
Tourism considerations notwithstanding, casinos no longer wanted to subsidize racing in return for not establishing slots operations at the state’s tracks. Ultimately, the Christie administration backed the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority’s play to hold all thoroughbred racing at Monmouth Park and reserve The Meadowlands for harness racing only.
The administration pressured the horseman to either fall in line or face a shutdown of thoroughbred racing. The measure came to a vote and the resolution was passed by a 7-2 margin.
If Monmouth Park is unable to sustain itself, expect the state to get out of the thoroughbred business. No tears will be shed in Atlantic City if that’s the case.
The only question remaining is did the Governor of New Jersey do racing a favor, or did he give New Jersey’s thoroughbred industry just enough rope to hang itself? Stay tuned.
**Clarification made on Mar. 11, 2010, 5:03 pm: According to a source from a New Jersey-based horsemen's group, trainer Tim Hills was not an original dissenter. That person was later identified as Fred Maffeo.
Written by John Pricci
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