What Can I Say....It Was So Money

Tweet It's Danny Bonaduce Day here at the Space Station....not to be confused with Black Eyed Susan Dey. Yep, you guessed it, it's shameless self promotion time (plus I know my cousin secretly loves Danny so I was trying to get his attention).
So you may remember I plugged that new racing website last Friday on my way out the door to Saratoga called GradeOneRacing.com? Well I entered their initial (free) handicapping contest (with $5,000 in prizes) making 10 mythical $20 Win/Place bets on 5 races from Saratoga (Saturday) and 5 races from Del Mar (Sunday).

I spent Thursday night handicapping both cards and submitted my selections before leaving for the Spa. Saturday's Spa selections pretty much flattened out and I had $134 in winnings with one win (Jim's Appletini) and one place (Volcker) and was nowhere near the Top 50 leaderboard. Then a funny thing happened on Sunday.....I got red hot. En Fuego hot. Smokin' Joe hot. Burned your hand on the stove cuz you thought it was off, hot.

Due to a six car pileup on the NYS Thruway (where we sat still for an hour somewhere around Batavia) I was freaking out that I would miss the Haskell national telecast (which I missed 70% of). We finally got through and home in time to watch them loading in the gate. So after the race I started writing my Spa entry and had half an eye on Del Mar to see how my selections fared. Of course I wasn't betting (like an idiot).

So Race 5 comes on and the TVG guys aren't even mentioning my selection, Ranger Heartley, who is moving between 7-1 and 8-1, going off at the latter. Don'tcha know he wires the field at 8-1 and pays $18.60 and $7.40 adding $260 to the coffers. At this point, I hadn't checked what happened in the first race, wherein I selected Avid, a promising filly. A quick check at the DRF site and wah-lah, she won ($4.20 $2.60), another $68. Not bad. At least I'll have a positive ROI I'm thinking, being at $462. Next up is a horse who is a chronic place finisher, Royal F J (9-2), who I make a token $2 show bet on to ensure my free BRIS PP's (cheap, I know). Royal F J dead heats for second in a wild finish paying $3.00 (another $30 in the coffers = $492). Ironically the show bet paid more ($3.90) than the DH place amount. Next up, I have Subsidized, the favorite at 2-1...wins paying $5.80 and $3.60 (up to $586). We're not at the final and bonus race, the G1 Bing Crosby ($100 bonus if you select the winner) and I have Smiling Tiger, whose hovering around 8-1. Cost of Freedom, the heavy favorite at 4-5 stumbles out of the gate and Smiling Tiger wires the field (in what could be called a truly speed favoring day) and pays $17.80 and $7.20, taking my total up to $936 including the bonus $$. I'm rubbing my eyes not believing what just happened. Later that evening I check the Top 50 page and find I finished 9th overall, winning a $75 voucher into my newly created XpressBet account and a free signed copy of one of G-1R CEO Steve Davidowitz' books. Shazam. Maybe I should spend a little more time looking at Del Mar, eh? Final stats (10 5-2-1, $4.68), only Economic Swoon and Phola missed the board. OK, enough shameless self promotion.

Congrats to this week's Toga Party III point getters, Tony Bada Bing, Green But Game (looming large with Castellano in the irons), Kennedy's Corridor and the SpaceBro by selecting A Little Warm in the Jim Dandy. With 10 days (a quarter of the meet) in the books at the Spa we've had 42 turf races, projecting to 168, close to the prognostications of yours truly (175), Kennedy (166) and Foolish Pleasure (165). Johnny V has 14 wins, projecting to a monster 56, and his sidekick Todd Pletcher surged ahead of Chad Brown with 2 wins on Monday to reach 8. Stay tuned, this year's Party Contest looks to be a barn burner.

Nice post by our friend to the north, Triple Dead Heat on the Royal North Stakes, where one of Obviously NY Stables best and EquiSpace favorite, Mother Russia, took second behind Unzip Me, ridden by Joe Talamo, who made a rare appearance at Woodbine. Check out Keith's photo essay, it's superb.

As Vince Vaughn would say in Swingers, "It's So Money, Baby."