EquiSpace: Woodbine

Monday, July 8, 2013

Queen's Plate 2013: The Day in Pictures

Photo Courtesy: Mike Burns Photography Ltd.

That's Midnight Aria on the right holding off the charging favorite, Up With the Birds to win the 154th Queen's Plate at a rain-soaked Woodbine Racetrack. It was a fun day up with our neighbors to the north as I covered the big race for The Buffalo News. My advance on winning trainer Nick Gonzalez had Midnight Aria ($35.20) on top for a nice 16-1 hit. I also wrote a piece for the #QP2013 website on trainer Mark Casse. The Woodbine Media office did a great job promoting the race on social media and the handle showed some of those affects with a record-setting $9.7M for a Plate day.

My post race recap for The Buffalo News highlighted the upcoming second jewel of the Canadian Triple Crown which will be run at beautiful Fort Erie Racetrack on Tuesday July 30 during a twilight racing card at the border oval. The home-based Gonzalez has never won the Prince of Wales and would be a feather in the cap of the two-time Plate winning trainer.

I was happy for the Tuccis, nephew Lou and his uncle Carlo who have been chasing the Plate dream for over 40 years. I caught them about a half hour before the Plate draw breakfast and they were the first owners that had shown up for the draw and seemed like kids in a candy store, so excited to be a part of the race. They certainly cashed in on Midnight Aria who they claimed at Gulfstream Park for $35,000 and have now won a $1 million race.

It'll be interesting to see who Mark Casse sends down to the Fort. In my conversations with him last week he mentioned if either of the two Oxley horses (Dynamic Sky and Spring in the Air) performed well in the Plate he would likely send them to Fort Erie. His other top colt, Uncaptured, second in the G3 Matt Winn at Churchill several weeks ago would then likely be sent to the Haskell. It should be interesting to see what he does with Dynamic Sky finishing third in the Plate.

Here are some pictures from Queen's Plate day at Woodbine:

Beautiful Woodbine Racetrack
Press Box view

Jockey Gerry Olquin

Caton Bredar interview Olquin
at the HorsePlayerNow tent
Jeremy Plonk looks on

Food Trucks Galore

Night School Tent was doing
brisk business teaching newbies the game

Woodbine facade

Hard Not to Like - Johnny V up

Irish Mission - Alex Solis up

Moment of Majesty - Joel Rosario was in the house

Solid Appeal - Jesse Campbell up

Trainer Mark Casse with
the Oxleys trailing

Boom Shakalaka

Solid Appeal captures the $200K G2 Dance Smartly

Campbell had a pretty big day

Solid Appeal - Win Photo

Bath Time - Solid Appeal

And then this happened....

Call to the Post for QP 154

Midnight Aria - Campbell up

Third place finisher Dynamic Sky
Rosario in the irons

Spring in the Air - Gary Boulanger
had the mount

Eurico Rosa da Silva on Up With the Birds

Rainy Woodbine grandstand

First time by in the Plate with
lone speed Midnight Aria on the engine

Tucci Stables
Gonzalez fists up in background

Lou Tucci parading the winner
past the grandstand

Campbell tossing flowers
from the Queen's Plate blanket in the air

That's a wrap from Woodbine and the Queen's Plate, hope you enjoyed the coverage.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Casse seeks elusive Plate win #QP2013

Trainer Mark Casse with
Owner John C. Oxley

TORONTO – It's the one race in Canada that has eluded him in 35 years of training thoroughbreds.

Five-time Sovereign Award winning trainer Mark Casse has achieved almost everything possible when it comes to thoroughbred racing in Canada. The one missing victory in a training career approaching 10,000 starts is a win in the Queen’s Plate, Canada’s most famous horse race.

The first leg of Canada's triple crown on Sunday afternoon at Woodbine Racetrack will be the 154th running of the $1 million race and Casse will send four starters to the gate seeking that elusive first Plate victory. He is winless in 13 attempts at capturing the Gallop for the Guineas with his best finish being a second place result in 2011 with 61-1 shot Hippolytus.

Last year he thought he had a solid shot at getting the monkey off his back with his filly Dixie Strike, who came back to win the Prince of Wales Stakes at Fort Erie after finishing third in the Plate. "I decided after last year when I thought I had good shot to win it, that I'm not making any more predictions. I'm starting to feel like Todd Pletcher does in the Kentucky Derby," said Casse.

His two top chances are owned by John C. Oxley, who four years ago started using Casse regularly with much success. The filly Spring in the Air has faced top competition, including three Grade 1 fields over the past year, looks to have a big shot at getting Casse into the Plate winner's circle. "Of all four of the horses, the horse training the best so far is Spring in the Air. If she could come up with the effort she gave in the [Grade 1] Alcibiades last year, she may be our best chance."

CONTINUE READING AT QUEENSPLATE.COM

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Barber, MGM chief, hopes Kaigun is Plate-ready

MGM CEO and Chair Gary Barber

Thoroughbred racing has its share of prominent owners and MGM CEO Gary Barber fits the bill as his Ontario-bred colt Kaigun will try to win the 154th edition of the Queen's Plate on Sunday afternoon at Woodbine Racetrack. Barber took over the sole title of chairman and CEO of the Lion last October when his longtime partner and co-chairman Roger Birnbaum shed the title to produce exclusively for MGM full-time. The two had been partners since the mid-1990's in Spyglass Entertainment producing such successes as The Sixth Sense and Seabiscuit.

MGM which emerged from bankruptcy several years ago has undergone a renaissance since Barber and Birnbaum took over the reigns. Barber is the money guy as he is a former chartered and certified public accountant. In the first quarter of 2013, MGM continues to show large increases in revenues (168 percent over the first quarter of 2012) attributed mainly from theatrical revenues spurred from the movies Skyfall and The Hobbit according to the most recent quarterly report filed with the SEC.

Barber has long been involved with horse racing and according to his Breeders' Cup bio he owns nearly 50 thoroughbreds through various ownership interests with about half of them in training. Trainer Mark Casse trains eight of those horses, five of which are stakes winners. Barber with his partners from Quintessential Racing will start Kaigun, the lightly raced son of Northern Afleet, the sire of multiple-Classic winner Afleet Alex.

I caught up with Casse on Monday and you can tell he enjoys training for Barber continually touting him as "one of the good guys" of the sport. Later in the day Casse and Barber would team up to produce a track record with their 4-year old sensation Delegation who covered the mile and a quarter Dominion Day Stakes in 2:01.51 winning by nine and one-quarter lengths. The previous track record belonged to Strait of Dover set in last year's Queen's Plate.

Justin Stein, the rider of last year's Plate winner will get the call aboard Kaigun who worked five furlongs on Saturday in 1:00.2. With Gary Boulanger having to make a commitment on Spring in the Air early, the door was open for Stein to get the mount on Kaigun and Casse thinks the horse and jockey "will fit nicely together."

Boulanger who rode horses for Casse during the winter as part of his comeback worked Kaigun and grew fond of the chestnut colt. Gary thought so much of him he drove from Ocala to Lexington, a 12-12 hour trip just to ride him in his maiden race at Keeneland. He worked Kaigun the other day. We've been 50-50 whether Kaigun was going to run and we needed a commitment on Spring in the Air so he went ahead and made the commitment before we even knew Kaigun was going to run," said Casse.

He's a developing horse who broke his maiden in his next race at Woodbine and then finished seventh in the Plate Trial over five lengths behind the winner Dynamic Sky. Casse admittedly knows they are taking a shot with Kaigun, but he raved over his talent level during our conversation.

For Gary Barber, a win on Sunday would be the perfect script for this year's Queen's Plate.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

The Plate, Mid-Year Report and DNC

Plate Stuff

That's Nipissing (Photo Credit: Michael Burns Photography), the Woodbine Oaks winner who will be looking to claim Canada's most famous race, the Queen's Plate, a week from today at Woodbine. I'll be heading to the Great White North and suburban Toronto to cover the Plate for The Buffalo News (TBN) on Thursday for the post position draw and on Sunday afternoon. My Friday racing notebook focused on some of the latest news on the Plate contenders and you can also find information about betting on horse racing online.

Making a bet on the 2013 Queen's Plate race could prove fruitful as it looks like we could have upwards of 12 starters in the gate for this year's edition of "The Gallop for the Guineas." In addition to my usual coverage of the Plate at TBN I will be doing a trainer feature for the Queen's Plate.com website which will have features from an outstanding crew of writers up through Plate Day. The Twitter hashtag for this year's Plate is #QP2013, so be sure to check out all things Canadian horse racing over the next week.

UPDATE: It looks like Rackman is off the Plate trail after working 6F this morning handily at 1:14.20, leaving the field at 11 probable starters. Kaigun breezed 5F in 1:00.20 this morning and will have last year's winning jockey Justin Stein in the irons for trainer Mark Casse. Another Casse contender, Jagger M breezed 5F in his final Plate work in 1:02.20. It was a big morning for workouts as Nipissing worked 4F in :48 for conditioner Rachel Halden. Up With the Birds and His Race to Win worked in tandem for trainer Malcolm Pierce in 1:00.60.

Mid-Year Report

I launched my 2013 mid-year racing report this weekend in print at TBN and here is a link to the highs and lows to the racing season at halftime through my eyes. I've enjoyed writing the halftime report since 2008 and you can find links to past mid-year reports here if you want to take a stroll down memory lane. Unfortunately the 2012 post is currently lost in cyberspace after the TBN website redesign, hopefully it'll be recovered someday.

DNC

One of the largest companies in Buffalo is Delaware North Company (DNC) was featured in the Business section of this morning's TBN. One thing I did not realize was how DNC, a company listed as No. 172 on Forbes list of largest privately held companies that has over $2.6 billion in annual revenues, obtained its start in the hospitality and food-service business. You guessed it...horse racing.

An excerpt from the article on "Changing Customer Tastes" Chairman and CEO Jeremy Jacobs offered this tidbit:

"I often tell people, what was the largest attended business in sports years ago? It was horse racing. More people went to horse racing than any other sport. Today it’s non-existent, and you have to grow from that or you become nonexistent. The horse racing business got us into the gaming business. We wouldn’t have done that if we hadn’t been in that horse racing business."

Whoa. Non-existent.

President and Chief Operating Officer Charles E. Moran, Jr. offers the following on passing on the chance to run the Aqueduct and their decision to opt out in the re-bidding of the contract eventually won by Genting:

"We had a huge number of qualifiers that they never got around to looking at, to be candid with you. And in the final analysis, the company that did the deal, they put in no qualifications whatsoever about competition, about requirements from the state. They decided to take a risk and write a $375 million check. We would have never done it the way they did it."

Interesting perspective from a company that runs Finger Lakes Casino & Racetrack, the Arizona OTB Network and has a thorough knowledge of gaming operations. A related entity owns the Boston Bruins and DNC currently has hospitality contracts at such well-known places as Yosemite National Park and Oriole Park at Camden Yards as well as a number of major airports throughout the U.S.

************************

For my friends up north in Canada, have a great Canada Day tomorrow and I look forward to seeing some of you next week in Toronto.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Space Invasion: International Day at Woodbine

Joshua Tree

That's Joshua Tree (IRE) winner of the 2012 Pattison Canadian International, with jockey Frankie Dettori aboard in the Woodbine winner's circle after winning the International for the second time in the last three years.

It was an extremely balmy 70 degrees at Woodbine on Sunday afternoon for the 75th running of the Canadian International, sponsored by advertising giant Pattison, and the winds were whipping pretty well all day long to boot. The day featured a number of talented jockeys from around the world including Olivier Peslier, Dettori and contingents from the west coast (Garret Gomez and Mike Smith) and from New York (Ramon Dominguez and Johnny V) going for some big prize money on the E.P. Taylor turf course at Toronto's track.

Three Breeders' Cup (BC) "Win and You're In" races on the weeds were won by Next Question (Nearctic - BC Turf Sprint), Siyouma (E.P. Taylor - BC F&M Turf) and the aforementioned Joshua Tree (International - BC Turf). However, it looks like only Next Question will play the free pass and head to Santa Anita in early November. My recap for The Buffalo News from Sunday up at Woodbine can be found here.

It was another rough day at the windows although when I'm working I don't usually spend as much time playing the ponies, especially on the polytrack of Woodbine, which has gotten the best of me over the years. Our pooled Pick-4's with Woodbine media maven Keith McCalmont and Daily-Gazette racing writer Mike MacAdam went up in flames. A) Because we inadvertently left off Next Question, Keith's pick to win the race in the early P4 and B) Because a horse named Sorry About That won the nightcap clearly destroying any thoughts of P4 glory.

It was good to see Jessica Chapel, Ernie Munick, Garnet Barnsdale and Nick Costa, all passionate horse folks up at Woodbine to take in Canada's richest race on the calendar. Kudos again to the Woodbine press corps, who find new ways to make me feel comfortable and make me want to get back to the Canadian track as soon as I can.

Here are some pictures from the Canadian International Day.