Poor fella was caught. I guess the only place harder to escape than Alcatraz is a horse track. Some horses embrace it and the sooner they do they better they’ll perform. Naturally these grizzled vets make a bit of news when they return to the track. Comma to the Top was the ferocious, tenacious, ostentatious winner of the Grade 3 Tom Fool Handicap at lovely Aqueduct.
He was passed once, nearly passed another time, yet refused to ultimately be passed by a field of willing foes. This is horse is a gamer. He’s an alpha. You can just tell. He “can make you feel high, full of the single greatest commodity known to man. Promise. Promise of a greater day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura, can be found in the gait of a fast race horse, in its smile, in its soul, and how it can make every little rotten thing about life seem like it’s going to be OK. The fast race horses, Will, that’s all they are. Bottled promise, scenes from a brand new day, hope dancing in quarter-inch bends.”
Go on, check the freezer for human heads.
Last I remember Comma to the Top he finished last of them all in the 2011 Kentucky Derby, fulfilling a long line of three-year-old sprinters thrust into a race 30 percent too long for them. When you’re a gelding you don’t have as many options in life. It’s either run, or, I don’t know, do card shows in maybe the most depressing Golden Year Gig ever. I mean ever. (Put him in the Hall, already. You guys are gamblers. Surely you sympathize).
What C Triple T did this past weekend was nothing short of a throwback performance. He set blistering fractions and refused to be passed. But the funny thing is, he just finished third a week before in the Grade 2 San Carlos … in Cali … Then his trainer, Peter Miller, put C Triple T on a plane dead set for NYC. No sense in training him. Train him in a race and maybe make some bank.
“The horse performed pretty well last time [in the Grade 2 San Carlos a week ago at Santa Anita], so we took a shot, considering the horse came out of it very good,” said Martin Contreras, Miller’s assistant trainer. “This guy is a tough fighter, and when in he’s in his right moment he fights pretty tough. We got lots of luck [on the photo finish]. Thank God on that one!”
Horses, whether gelded or not, deserve extra cred. The N Y R A works in incentives for juveniles and for turf races of a certain field size. How about a longevity incentive? I’ve written before that to keep horses in training longer, the risk (read: penalty) of loss on future breeding value needs to be levied. If it’s an across-the-board appeal to de-penalize these horses then what’s the problem? Breeders will have better insight into this, but a more attractive racing product can only help them, I’d think.
HRI’s most famous troll doesn’t give a rat’s you-know-what about “big names” and simply wants his shot at the “nags” under the leaky roof. Great. That’s 1 % of the people who pledge allegiance to horse racing.
The cynic will say that keeping a horse around merely for bonuses may hurt the horse. You keep him/her around longer than it should, connections run the risk of running unsound, old horses into the ground for a few extra grand. For every innovation there’s a cynic there to swing his axe.
Jess Jackson had the right idea when holding out for more dough. Many thought he was greedy; many thought he held tracks hostage. But think about it from his angle. He brings a BIG HORSE to the Woodward and instead of 18,000 people betting and buying food, there are 30,000 people buying food, paying admission, etc.
Professional tennis players get all kinds of bonuses for playing abroad (a big reason you don’t see any great players State side except for the U.S. Open). It’s time that marquee horses and connections stick around so we can see what C Triple T’s of the circuit can do.
He paid $6.30, by the way, not bad when you think about it.
08 Mar 2013 at 10:07 am | #
I am pleased that you condescended, held tightly your nose typing no doubt with one hand, and mentioned Turfway Park (leaving numerous readers of HRI scrambling to determine just where this track is located).
You, as do just about all turf writers, have little regard, let alone respect, for any racetrack that isn’t supported by Pletcher, Baffert, Mott, Zito, etc; in fact you seem to find it necessary to denigrate such racetracks, as you did in your commentary above by tossing in the comments ‘leaky roof and 1% of people ...’. May I point out a fact (attention Mr. Kling). Numerous so-called second-tier racetracks are in better physical shape than Aqueduct, Belmont, and
Saratoga - they are virtually brand new, far more modern, clean, appealing to patrons, and ignored entirely by turf writers.
So, Jesse Jackson, his vineyard producing Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay (my favorite white), brings a plodder to a race and the crowd in attendance doubles. Well, did this crowd increase handle enough, purchase enough dogs/beer to cover the cost of the increased purse that was the reason Jackson’s ‘big horse’ was entered? Hmmm?
What to hell does profitability have to do with it, right? The crowd was huge; the fact that this crowd won’t be back again until the next six figure race starring a ‘big’ nag is immaterial, right (what, we worry? We got slots)?
As to the 1% who chase the broken down claimers at tracks with leaking roofs, I’m certainly in that group, and I am inclined to believe that we are the only gamblers cashing on a regular basis.
This world is big enough for me and all turf writers who can’t see beyond Pletcher, Baffert, et cetera’s next horse. I’ll stick with plugs that have started twenty to eighty times already - the nags that are the foundation of Thoroughbred racing. You turf writers go with the thoroughbreds that race four to ten times and are gone forever. Keep on writing about the next ‘big’ stake race, and continue to pray that slot revenue keeps flowing to the racetrack to keep it in operation. Oh, and please bet on a thoroughbred race once in a while.
10 Mar 2013 at 12:23 pm | #
I spent a year following a trainer at Laurel. He trains out of Bowie. So I know what it’s like to be completely immersed in a culture devoid of Pletcher, Baffert, et al.
I believe Comma To The Top’s trainer is a small fry, no?
You know, I’d love to bet on the nags. Maybe some day when I get the student loans payed off. When I place a bet my anxiety level spikes and doesn’t feel worth the 180/104 blood pressure. I’d be betting my wife’s money and that just ain’t cool!
Be well.
B