Around The Horn

Tweet

Time to take a spin around the horn, but first, whatever happened to Randall Tex Cobb?

We'll weave you in and out of some of my favorite and recent topics (horse racing and otherwise).....

Jeremy Lin. You've heard the puns over hundred times, but what this kid is doing to the NBA for the past five games is what legends are made of. Will he end up being the Mark "The Bird" Fidrych flash in the pan or will he become the next great thing in the NBA.  130 points in his first five games puts him in some lofty company, more than anyone in the modern era, and you can bet there are some legends in there.  My guess is he ends up somewhere in between, but man, you gotta love what he's doing in the short term. Sit back, stay up and watch, as it will make you suffer from Linsomnia, as you won't be able to keep your eyes off his cross-over.

Road to the Roses (aka RttR).  The annual Derby fantasy contest is open for business. I make the same mistakes every year picking horses that run on the same weekends, don't spread the wealth over the various races that you can accumulate points in, etc.  Why would this year be any different? Ok, maybe I'll bear down and get er done this year.

Luck. Been through two episodes and it has me interested so far. The difference is, I'm watching it as entertainment and not as an obsessed horse racing fan. The characters are interesting, there are some big name actors and a buzz outside of our little horse racing niche is talking about racing. In fact, one of my former partners called me to ask me to explain claiming races to him. I did my best, but also pointed him to the Hello Race Fans site that is helping out viewers who don't quite get the racing terminology. Like I said, I'm  watching from an entertainment point of view, a show in the old Sopranos time slot that just happens to be around a sport I love and understand the lingo. Bonus points. I'm going to keep watching and not let little things bother me about it.

Derby preps. I'm determined to find value in this year's prep races. Favorites rarely win these races as horses mature and can improve greatly over their 2-year old campaigns. We've already seen two heavy favorites in Hansen and Liaison go down this year. If there are races to stay away from the chalk and find a price horse, these are it.

Donn Day. Sloppy track, soft turf does not make a good Space bet. I'm glad I wagered little for this early in the season tyring to figure out a sloppy Gulfstream surface is not for me. The handicap division looks to be one that is Game On Dude's for the taking based on the efforts in Florida. I did have Hymn Book in my Pick Four (based on taking a second look after hearing Steve Byk rave about him), but that was about it for my day. I did much better wagering last weekend on the fast and firm surfaces. I need to learn to pick my spots on a sloppy day.

The Cuse. Making a special trek next week for the South Florida game and pretty excited to see the second-ranked Orange up close and personal. I'm especially excited to see the magic of Dion Waiters who is having a superb sophomore season and reminds me of a young Michael J (really). They are deep enough to make a run at the title, but they showed last night that they are fully capable of an off night. The good thing is they showed the resiliency to win when things weren't going their way while getting the Pitino monkey off their backs. A #1 seed sure would help the cause and hopefully they don't burn out in the Big East tourney, should they go deep into that one.

Chantal's Retweets. Speaking of Dion, the Syracuse twitterati have a running gag about Dion's obsessive (or excessive) re-tweeting after a game. Our timelines explode with twitter accounts we have never seen before -- all begging for the treasured Dion retweet. Well, we have our own little re-tweeter in the horse racing world, and she seems to love to RT every fan who shows her the love after a big race. Brace yourself, race twits, the Chantal RT is coming to a timeline near you.

Animal Kingdom. Hopefully he redeems the newly graduated 4-year old class who faltered badly in the Donn last weekend when he tries the turf in the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Stakes on Feb. 25. He's supposedly pointed at the $10M Dubai World Cup, so the racing world's eyes will be squarely focused on his upcoming effort in Tampa. He's never run on Tapeta, the Meydan surface, but turf horses seem to run well on it at nearby  Presque Isle Downs, so maybe he'll thrive on it. [UPDATE 2/15: Looks like AK is scheduled for an allowance race at GP this Saturday (2/18) on the turf at 1 1/16-miles]

Checking In

Tweet Saturday maintenance post for the weekend. Cleaning the salt off the car and wondering why the check engine light is on at the blog? Here's some odds and ends as we head into a holiday weekend of racing.

I took a look at the Fair Grounds all-stakes Pick 4 for The Buffalo News in my Sports, Ink Blog post yesterday, check it out.

Prayers go out to Eibar Coa who is in surgery this morning after fracturing vertebra in his neck in a horrific spill at Gulfstream yesterday.

I had a nice visit on Wednesday to Fort Erie Race Track to meet with Elissa Blowe, Manager of Media & Marketing for the FELRC who showed me their new RaceBook and shared plans for the 2011 live racing season at the Fort. My article in today's News on my visit can be found here.

The TBA's Road to the Roses League is up and running thanks to new league manager Tony Bada Bing, who writes the A Leg Up blog, and was winner of the 2010 EquiSpace Toga Party contest (like how I plug my contest?). [League Number: 428912689 Activation Code: 2771589346] Sign up and play along with the TBA bloggers. There are some other leagues out there, I plan up signing up for the HRF and Wireplayers.com RTTR leagues this year also. (Feel free to post your activation codes in the comments section!)

Good luck this weekend and let's cash some tickets!

Shoveling It...

Tweet The mercury hit a balmy 40 degrees in the B-lo today. My back hurts. My feet hurt. The bottom of my driveway can only fit one car out due to my less than stellar snow shoveling skills. Of course, Mother Nature waited until our city was holding its annual Winter Fest before melting all the snow, but hey, that's Buffalo for you.


So what's been cooking in the Space Station lately....


- The Space Kid turned two and he's got Keeneland, Churchill, Gulfstream and Saratoga notches on his belt. Not bad for two, eh?


- Posting has been a little light lately due to the time of the year (tax season) and keeping up with my responsibilities for The Buffalo News. My latest article on betting Derby Futures was in Saturday's print edition and can be found here, in case you missed it (h/t to the Paulick Report for the nice linkage).

- ThoroFan Chairman Michael Amo, was one of the invited guests to testify last Monday in front of the Senate Committee on Racing, Wagering and Gaming. The post hearing media has mostly been focused around the NYC OTB's and consolidation, but his speech on behalf of racing fans is a good read. All of the written testimony from last Monday's hearing in Albany can be found here.


- Planning on a visit to Fort Erie Race Track this week to check out what's new on the other side of the border.


- Here's where you can find the RSS feed of The News' Sports, Ink blog to see my weekly posts every Friday.As other posts are included here, other than mine, you can filter them on the right hand sidebar under "horse racing." Check it out.


- I was very impressed watching Brethren smoke the Davis field, and was surprised to see the 83 Beyer. The best recap I've read is at the outstanding SB Nation Down The Stretch blog, where Matt explains why he thinks Brethren was issued such a low Beyer.


- Suffered my second bad beat of the year on Saturday when edged out of the Gulfstream Pick 4 beaten by a head in the final leg when my 9-1 choice Safety Squeeze couldn't get past 8-1 Green Bluff and $1,200 went up in smoke. I was at a friend's house who has his own kegerater..so that made it all better. GP hasn't been very kind to me this winter. Earlier in the meet, Tar Heel Mom kicked me out of a carryover Pick 5 in the fourth leg (paid $4,200), with double digit winners on the front and back end, picking up a 4/5 conso. I had Hilda's Passion that day...of course she beat Mom today in the Hurricane Bertie. Needless to say, they were both on my ticket today.


- The El Camino Real Derby must have been bittersweet for Steve Asmussen, who had the prohibitive favorite Comma to the Top, falter, but his stablemate Silver Medallion picked up some solid graded earnings. It'll be interesting to see where both of them end up next.

- I am looking forward to next weekend's Risen Star, with Machen, Rogue Romance, Santiva and Wilkinson all probables to run at the Fair Grounds.

Things are starting to heat up (literally) and....we're not dead yet...and, by the way, if you see any of those 50.6 million fans, can you have them stop by this blog? (PS - I vote Fiction).

Must be a Buffalo Thing

Tweet It seemed like every time I turned around this weekend there was a Buffalo guy or someone tied to Buffalo's past that was on television doing something great. It's been that way since New Year's Eve when a little known harness racer named Boomer Berman splashed onto the ESPN scene in Chris Berman's "Two Minute Drill" (video at end of the post).

I spent Friday afternoon touring Buffalo Raceway with Chief Operating Officer, James Mango and Marketing Director Jonathan Cramer preparing for an article on Friday's opening of the 69th season of racing at the half mile track for The News. I look forward to sharing more insights into my visit in future posts and a Space Invasion visit during a winter weekend in the coming months. Western New York is fortunate to have a customer-friendly harness track in our backyard, if you're from this part of the State be sure to check it out.

The week didn't start off so good for our neighbors to the north who squandered a three goal lead to the Russians who scored five unanswered third period goals to upset the Canadians in the World Juniors gold medal game. Buffalo's airport was in the news on Thursday when Delta officials refused to let the Russian team on the plane, due to...ummm...being a bit overserved.

Yesterday former Bills running back Marshawn Lynch played pinball through former Bills coach Gregg Williams' defensive secondary, with an exhilarting 67 yard touchdown. That highlight has been seen over 1,000 times now, but it gets better every time.

This afternoon, another former Bills running back Willis McGahee broke a few tackles en route to a back breaking touchdown in Kansas City, highlighted by a tomahawk chop taunt in the end zone after the run.

Finally, former University of Buffalo running back James Starks and sixth round draft choice of the Green Bay Packers was called into duty for an injury-riddled backfield only to set a Packer rookie rushing record in a playoff game. He carried 23 times for 123 yards to lead the Packers over the Eagles and completed the Buffalo running back trifecta for the weekend.

I already have my year's baddest beat in the G3 Fort Lauderdale Stakes today when 11-1 Blues Street was beaten by a nostril by 12-1 Little Mike at Gulfstream Park. That's why they call it gambling. Back to the drawing board.

As promised here is our very own Boomer Berman on ESPN (via @BuffaloRaceway):

In Other News....

Tweet The calendar has turned, and the slate has been swept clean. 2011 is here and the racing year 2010 is in the history books....well, other than that little vote to be revealed in a couple weeks in Miami Beach. So what's been cookin' in the Space Station over the holidays, you ask? Well...in other news.....

- You may have noticed that I have a new blog logo in the upper left hand sidebar. I have a couple of acquaintances in the Marketing/PR world, but I didn't want to bother them with my little blog, so I searched around to have someone design me a logo for the blog, among other things. I landed on the 48hourslogo.com website that holds contests for web designers to create logos for a minimum of $79, over a two-day period. You submit your logo specs, what look you have in mind, your price and then you receive designs to judge (my contest had 27 entries). My winning selection was from a designer in the Phillipines that kept working with me as I tweaked his logo through the structured process. I thought it was a very well run site and a great business concept. The website charges 10% on top of the logo price to host the contest. Let me know what you think....

- I joined the NHC Tour and got my arse handed to me in Sunday's online contest which featured races from Aqueduct, Fair Grounds and Santa Anita. But finishing last means the same as finishing 6th (top 5 qualified), so we'll chalk it up to a learning experience.

- Space Gal gave me Satellite Radio (Sirius) for Xmas and I'm loving it. Especially channel 126!

- I attended the US-Canada World Juniors Hockey semifinal last night at HSBC Arena in Buffalo, and sat in the M&T suite (my firm's bankers) and I have to say that it was one of the best environments I've ever been in, prior to a sporting event. It was unbelievably electric and you could sense that the first goal would be a huge factor in setting the tone to the game. The crowd was a sea of red-clad Canadian fanatics who were as boisterous as any fan base I've ever been around. And I've been to Stanley Cup Finals, a World Series and an NCAA Hoop Final. They completely took over the arena, any attempt to get a USA chant going was completely drowned out by the Can-a-da chant to the same rhythm. Not to mention their boys took it to the red, white and blue all night long. After scoring the first goal three minutes into the game, they never looked back. It was an excellent experience, nonetheless.

- I spent some time studying my last three years of wagering (investing) statistics and found that my average wager increased 34%, my number of wagers was almost cut in half and I found myself in the black for the first time in three years. What do I attribute the positive results to? 1) I found that I had success at certain tracks (Gulfstream, Churchill and Saratoga) that I concentrated on; 2) My bet discipline was much better, as I focused on certain races that I felt confident in betting by taking a stand; 3) I didn't bet every race on the card; 4) I focused on Pick 3's and Pick 4's which focused myself on picking winners and; 5) I took long periods of time off to refresh in January, September and December.

- I've decided my wagering resolutions will be to stick with 2010's strategy and to stay away from tracks I don't normally play, other than a big prep race where I have some knowledge of the horses and trainers. I'm also resolved to have a winning Belmont Stakes Day for a change (haha) and avoid the annual bloodbath.

Ok....Gulfstream starts tomorrow...let's get after it...

Space Invasion: Gulfstream Park

Tweet If you’ve noticed it’s been a little quiet around these parts, it’s because the Space Clan took a little sojourn down South Florida way before the busy season cranks up to full tilt. We celebrated the Space Kid’s first birthday with Mickey and made a couple visits to beautiful Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach.

While in full relax mode, I spent more of Friday snapping pictures while flying solo then on Sunshine Millions Day. I caught about six races on Friday afternoon, where the crowd grew as the day passed, but it was pleasantly comfortable as I moved between the paddock seats and the rail all day long.

This was not my first visit to Gulfstream, but a lot has changed in and around the track since my last visit two years ago. I usually try and make a trip the second week of January, but with the little guy’s first and the Sunshine Millions on Saturday, tradition was put on the back burner and we came down a few weeks later. The weather both days was very pleasant, a little overcast with a warm wind swirling around the park. I really enjoy (to the chagrin of John from Not to the Swift) the Gulfstream surrounding, especially hanging out in the paddock area with a dollar draft (very dangerous, the dollar draft) and the Form in the bright Florida sunshine. Let’s say life was good.

I introduced myself to Travis Stone, Louisiana Downs race caller and co-founder of Horse Racing Nation on Friday after one of his simulcasts between races. We exchanged pleasantries and he was nice enough to spend a few minutes with me. His site seems to be doing rather well and he reported traffic has been increasing significantly.

This was a total gambling trip for me (on vacation from the blog too), so we concentrated on winning some money more than looking for blog intrigue. Not that anyone is ever intrigued by anything I write! We got out of Friday alive by hitting a trifecta ($57.50) in the 5th using the even money chalk (I’ll Take Two/Pletcher/Velazquez) on top of two 7-1’s (Shehashighhopes and Albali) which put us up a few schillings going into Saturday’s big day.
The next two races probably made my day (even though we suffered through gambling losses) from a fan perspective. In the 6th, Jose Lezcano rode a game Prestidigitation ($9.80) to a 4 1/2 length come from behind victory. I was watching from just beyond the finish line next to the winner’s circle and caught an extremely giddy Wayne Catalano greeting his winner upon his return to the winner’s circle. Cell phone in hand and screaming into it his excitement over the big win, he gave the five year old gelding and winner of 5 of 20 lifetime a nice pat on the rear.
The next race was crazy as Pletcher/Velazquez struck again after Drover ($10.80) wired the field after fast turf fractions (23:07, 47:03 and 1:11:87) opening up a 12 length lead after the half and holding off the hard charging 43-1 longshot Forty Nine Acres in a photo.

Day one was a success both from a fan perspective and in the ADW account. Here are some shots of Gulfstream and some of the day’s events.….

Gate break in the 4th on the turf with Aventura's condos in the background.

Cordero, Pletcher & Velazquez before jumping on Five Fifty Five, a Zayat horse that finished 8th.

Travis Stone doing the simulcast from the paddock for HRTV.

Alan H of the Bug Boys would be proud that I captured this shot of the Jockeys heading out of the saddling paddock.

Prestidigitation with a dominating win with Jose Lezcano up.

Well, maybe he's not so giddy. Trainer Wayne Catalano on the horn after Prestidigitation's big win. Believe me, he was a happy man.

That's a wrap on day one of two. Sunshine Millions post up next...

My Dream BC Rotation

Tweet So as the anticipation builds (are you holding your breath?) for the Breeders' Cup Committee to release their rotation plan for the next few Cups (or maybe more), I am putting out there my dream rotation and in-depth reasons why. There is much debate on whether pre-setting the lineup makes sense or not. My dream plan rotates a synthetic track in every three to four years, rotates the larger venues more frequently, but adds a "boutique" track every four years also.

Of course 2010 is set in stone at Churchill Downs, so we'll start the dream rotation with 2011.

2011 - Belmont Park. It'll have been six years since the Big Sandy hosted. I remember it well being in Hilton Head on a golf trip in '05 with a few horseballs who skipped a back nine for the start of the Cup.

2012 - Del Mar. One of the "boutique" rotations, but also notching a synthetic track on the rotation. Warm weather, great facility, Southern California knows how to promote it....if they could pull this off it would be tremendous.

2013 - Churchill Downs. Why not? The facility is tremendous, they can pack 'em in and maybe the first ones under the lights? Plus it'll be the big 5-0 for me and a cool trip.

2014 - Aqueduct Racetrack. OK, stop laughing, it should take about 5 years to get the renovations done and since they'll have selected the winning bidder for the VLT's in 2012, it should be good to go in 2014. Hey, I guy can dream, no?

2015 - Keeneland. Let's give a brother a chance. Questions on the capacity and parking could be solved via temporary/infield seating and a shuttle service? It's a great facility and deserves to hold the Cup someday. Boutique/synthetic rotation works too.

2016 - Hialeah Park. Hot damn would that be great or what? Let it Ride, baby.

2017 - Belmont Park. The six year rule would kick in and bring it back to New York, New York.

2018 - Woodbine. Synthetic rotation and I'm only 90 minutes away which is why it had to make the rotation. May have to bring in some large space heaters. Back up plan: Santa Anita. 24 years is a long waiting period.

2019 - Gulfstream Park. Nice Florida weather, Halsey should have the place in ship shape and adding some additional seating on the stretch drive should do the trick. 20 year anniversary of the last GP Cup.

2020 - Santa Anita. Surreal setting, can't go longer than 10 years without a return visit. Great sightlines (20/20 get it?)

That's my ten year plan with some serious speculation regarding a couple of the venues...whaddya think?

Cap Day

Tweet It's Cap Day at Belmont Park today and more importantly today's big race features Commentator, Nick Zito's 7yo chestnut gelding (6-5 ML), in the Metropolitan Handicap [aka the Met Mile (G1)]. I was fortunate enough to see his rousing 14 length win going a mile in January in an allowance race at Gulfstream where he set the track record and looked terrific doing so. He faces some formidable competition today in Kieran McLaughlin's Divine Park (5-2) coming off two straight wins. The Met Mile was first run in 1891 at Morris Park until 1904 when it was first run at Belmont. It has been there since (other than four runnings at the Big A) and is the first leg of the New York Handicap Triple (Suburban and Brooklyn round out the latter legs). Only four horses have captured the NY Triple, the last being Fit to Fight (1984). The others are notable horses, Whisk Brook II, Tom Fool and Kelso (the latter two both having races named after them at NY tracks).

The other speed horse in the race is First Defence, who finished second after pressuring Hard Spun in last summer's King's Bishop on Travers Day. He could end up in a duel with Commentator in the early stages of this race and that could benefit Tony Dutrow's Premium Wine, should the speed burn out the two front-runners. Also entered and last seen on the first Saturday in May is Z Humor (coupled with Premium Wine - Zayat entries), trying a shorter distance after his 14th place finish at Churchill. Another horse to keep an eye on is Kiss the Kid (15-1), who finished a strong third in the Donn (G1) at Gulfstream and the same in the Godolphin (G2).

Is he good enough to single on top? I think so.

Tri (1x3x5):
1st: Commentator
2nd: First Defence, Divine Park, Kiss the Kid
3rd: add Premium Wine, Z Humor

Let's hope that NYRA selected New York State-based New Era Cap to manufacture their cap day hats! The Buffalo-based company had been around since 1920 and is a fourth generation company dedicated to Western New York and manufacturing in the USA.