For all its innovations – huge purses, TV packaging, creative use of apostrophes and the color purple – the Breeders’ Cup did nothing to alter the basic ways in which outstanding Thoroughbreds are measured, whether they are sprinters, 2-year-olds, or older runners over various routes of ground.
The exception was the turf miler. Prior to 1984, there was no such thing in North America. The turf miler was the non-alcoholic beer of the game. There simply was no demand.
Welcome back, Keeneland.
The historic Lexington, Ky., track never actually went anywhere and over the last decade has continued to draw enthusiastic crowds and top horsemen for its spring and fall three-week meetings. Since 2006, however, more than half the racing there has had a big, awkward asterisk next to it: Most of the races were run on a synthetic surface, Polytrack, instead of on dirt, the traditional surface for centuries of the American sport.
It’s fall. Literally. And last weekend high-profile jockeys were hitting the ground like hundred-pound leaves – hard, harder, and hardest of all.
Kent Desormeaux, who at 44 is in the midst of another miracle rebirth, was unseated from the 2-year-old filly She’s a Big Winner during the post parade of the eighth race at Santa Anita Park on Sunday afternoon. This is not an unusual occurrence, especially with a first-time starter. A rider normally survives such a moment with nothing more than bruised pride.
While recovering from the shock of watching Ben’s Cat have dead aim on the front-runners in the stretch of last Saturday’s Laurel Dash and not passing them, I decided to see exactly where Ben, with his 27 wins in 43 starts, fits on the career wins list.
Prepare for The Overwhelming.
For college football fans, it is Week 6, and there’s no turning back. Saturday’s menu pits such natural enemies as Notre Dame vs. Syracuse, Vanderbilt vs. Kentucky, and TCU vs. SMU. Army also plays Yale, which is always good for a laugh.
By Saturday afternoon, golf nuts will be adding Red Bull to their Arnold Palmers. The Ryder Cup will be deep into its second day of wall-to-wall matches, morning, noon, and night, televised from Scotland, which is either five hours ahead of East Coast time or a century behind.
Seven years ago, Aaron Jones shared with me the story of the night his mother was murdered by an intruder. Later on, people who knew him said it was the first they’d heard it told in such detail, and you could understand why. Who would want to remember?
As the races began last Saturday at Parx, it was clear that the surface was very fast, but interestingly, not all that much faster than it was on the previous Tuesday, the last racing day, and about the same as the surface on Pennsylvania Derby Day in 2011.
Midway through the card, it became accepted that it was a speed- and rail-biased track. I would agree with that, but the total evidence does not support that it was so biased that it was unfair. Yes, it was difficult to make up ground, and horses certainly were winning at or near the rail. But who were those horses exactly?
The fundamental difference between the fantasy of sport and the reality of competition was on full, merciless display at Parx Racing last weekend, when California Chrome answered the bell but not much more while finishing sixth to the swift Bayern in the $1 million Pennsylvania Derby.
The fantasy of a lifetime was realized for the legion of California Chrome fans who came to Philadelphia from miles around, adorned in well-worn California Chrome T-shirts and caps, to see their Kentucky Derby and Preakness hero in the chestnut flesh.
When you have been going to a track for 30 years, you get a sense of what can and cannot be accomplished. I admit to being skeptical that last Saturday’s Pennsylvania Derby/Cotillion/California Chrome card at Parx Racing would be customer friendly. I was concerned that the place would be overrun, that bets would be missed, that food would be hard to find, that security would be overzealous. I was wrong about every one of my concerns.
