Saratoga 140: Racing’s Welcomed Distraction

Saratoga Springs, NY, July 22, 2008-- As a distraction for the thoroughbred racing industry, particularly here in New York, Saratoga could not have come at a better time. When negative stories lead the national sports pages and blogs, the trickle down is felt here first and hardest. That’s what comes from having a reputation for, deserved or imagined, being the industry leader.

Still reeling from Eight Belles death at the Derby, the Triple Crown traveling show rolled into New York and was stunned, as was a national audience, by the big brownout in Nassau County. The abysmal performance of a would-be legend was nowhere near as damaging to racing’s psyche as the Derby tragedy, nor should it be. But the debacle that was the Belmont--from flag fall to that‘s all--certainly didn’t lighten the mood.

Soon after the Belmont Stakes, Congress came calling to ask questions. Racing answered to the best of its ability but not satisfactory enough because the word out of Washington soon afterward was that there would be federal regulation in some form. And that drum has continued to beat ever since.

First Saratoga Diary Entry

Pricci's first 2008 'Saratoga Diary' entry will be on Wednesday, July 23rd.

Time Warp at Saratoga Preview Panel

Mike Kane’s time-warp fascination with a cordless microphone at the National Museum’s Saratoga Preview panel last night provided a metaphor for the relationship that horse racing has with the present.

A wall-to-wall gathering of mostly people over the age of 50 filled the Hall of Fame room to hear Charles Hayward, NYRA CEO; Kyle Brownell, horse racing handicapper for The Post-Star of Glens Falls, NY; Nick Zito, trainer of Belmont Stakes winner Da’Tara, and jockey Allan Garcia give their takes on the game, and many of the answers to the crowd’s questions seemed stuck in The Twilight Zone..

Garcia gets off the hook easiest for dodging a straightforward reply. He couldn’t recall a horse that inspired him to be a fan, so he merely shrugged his shoulders and smiled. He also claimed he rode the same at Saratoga and Belmont.

Brownell, flashing a remarkable grasp of the facts, played the role of a card counter in Las Vegas. But he was effective for usurping Kane’s emcee responsibilities, not by providing insight.

Zito continued his fight to prevent Polytrack from being installed. Yet, he never explained why he didn’t like it, other than to remark that the second dictionary definition of synthetic was "insincere." He failed the interviewee test bigtime, however, when one astute audience member asked him why after 30 years of breeding for speed, the horses weren’t faster. Zito didn’t understand the question.

Hayward, ever the charmer, was the crowd pleaser. Nevertheless, he seems more intent on studying things, instead of fixing things quickly with daring solutions. As leader of the equine world, the affable, intelligent Hayward can make a difference. Someone has just to convince him the “End of the World Clock” is running.

Cupidity in Curlin Career Path Poll

Ray Paulick, the former Editor-in-Chief of The Blood-Horse, announced a month ago that his new PaulickReport.com will be a horse racing site for breaking news and insider information. Well, this morning, the intrepid muckraker tipped readers on to a poll being conducted by Jess Jackson on stonestreetfarms.com that it intended to give fans a say regarding how they believe Curlin’s career should proceed.

At the time I voted in the poll, the results were basically even – roughly a third of the respondents chose a future on the turf for the colt, a third chose a return to the dirt, and another third begged for synthetic. There were a few votes cast for retirement, but those nuts must know something that even Paulick doesn’t, like that Curlin has a career-threatening injury or that owners who retire their runners ahead of time are doing good by the sport.

Now, c’mon, folks. Has the cupidity of the industry been taken so far that it’s infected the thinking of fans? The poll isn’t a Harvard Business School quiz designed to understand if you know how to make the most money. It’s a marketing device to enhance reader interaction with Jackson’s site. Play along.

Jackson will do what he wants in the end anyway. But go on record with where you’d like to see Curlin end his career – the Arc de Triomphe, some race in the USA on dirt, or the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Don’t vote as if you’d want to see the horse in mothballs, because that’s not true. Is it?

Last Call

Los Angeles, July 22--A few days before the 1999 Kentucky Derby, I asked Luke Kruytbosch, the new track announcer at Churchill Downs, if there were any tongue-twisters in the field that might get in the way of a clean race call.

"No," he said, "but it might help a little if (Bob) Baffert ran the filly in the (Kentucky) Oaks."

Oh?

"Excellent Meeting," Kruytbosch said. "She's by General Meeting. So is General Challenge, another Baffert horse. If there's one mistake I don't wanna make in my first Derby, I don't wanna call either one of those horses General Meeting."

Del Mar’s Polytrack Era, Part II

Los Angeles, July 15, 2008--You know the opening of Del Mar is near when you check with the Del Mar Hilton, across the street from the track, and find that the room rates start at $256 a night. Service is optional. After many years of staying there, I complained to a friend who was also having myriad problems in this one-star hotel. "Every year, when you check in, there's a new staff," he said. "And you get the feeling that every last one of them has just graduated from hotel-management school."

This year, to go with another new staff at the Hilton, there's a new track. Oh, you say, that was the story line last year, when Del Mar opened with horses running over Polytrack there for the first time? Well, yes, but for Del Mar's 69th season, this is the new-and-improved Polytrack. Last year's model, while perhaps reducing fatalities and injuries, also was "one of the the slowest main tracks in modern American racing history," wrote Steve Davidowitz in the Daily Racing Form.

The Cure to Empty Seats Syndrome

(SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY – July 21, 2008) It is impossible to determine the exact date of death for horse racing in America as a spectator sport. Carbon dating conducted on a cadaver found in Aqueduct’s abandoned grandstand suggests that it happened 30 years ago. The discovery of a 2001 Hialeah betting slip in the wallet of a 120-year-old man in a North Miami cryogenics lab has been credited as proof that the demise was, in fact, recent.

As a matter of record, the end came on with a plague. In the early 1980s, when the first signs of simulcast technology surfaced, racetracks abandoned their social contracts. When the NTRA decided an unhealthy diet of drab competition was unmarketable, it developed a fatty strategy that placed emphasis on special events, thus acknowledging that the game’s everyday pursuit did indeed appeal only to gamblers. When the Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships made auditions out of dozens of $1 million fixtures, even races of historic proportion lacked anodyne.

Sportsman Jackson Not Finished with Making Curlin a Legend

(Saratoga Springs, NY - July 13, 2008) Now we’ll learn what kind of sportsman Jess Jackson is. It is one thing to bravely venture into the unknown when everything seems to be going your way. But it is something else to be brave when the deck seems to be stacked against you.

Curlin’s second place finish to Red Rocks, the 2006 Breeders’ Cup Turf champion, has people believing that Jackson and trainer Steve Asmussen will abandon an invasion of Paris for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

The handsome, copper-colored son of Smart Strike was 2-5 in the $500,000 Man O’ War Stakes at Belmont Park, despite never having run on turf before. To say that he ran a bad race would be exaggerating the outcome. But to say that he looked good in defeat would be totally oblivious to his absentee brilliance.