It seems there’s never a week that goes by anymore without a bunch of demanding adolescents – better known as 3-year-olds – trying to hog the racing spotlight.
But not even the $750,000 in casino money offered on Saturday afternoon in the West Virginia Derby can steal the show from the collection of battle-hardened warriors going forth at the same 5:45 p.m. (Eastern) post time in the $750,000 Whitney Invitational Handicap at Saratoga.
Dale Romans, a man of both rhythm and blues, responded to the news that Joel Rosario would not be riding Dullahan in the defense of his Pacific Classic title by tapping his inner Joe Tex and declaring, “No one monkey stops my show.”
Good thing, too, because the show must go on, and on, and on, whether or not a particular jockey stays tied to a horse for now or forever – forever being a relative term.
Corporate Jungle – Thoroughbred, age 5 – was lying on his right side along the north wall of his stall in Tom Proctor’s Del Mar barn. His eye, turned to the wood-beamed ceiling, flickered open at the approach of a visitor and then closed halfway, resuming his doze. Three of his stretched out legs looked fine but the other, his left fore, was encased past the knee in a padded splint designed to support his freshly damaged ankle, whenever he chose to stand.
Orb, Oxbow, and Palace Malice divvied up this year’s Triple Crown races, and this weekend two of them take their next steps toward what could be a decisive rematch. All three are headed for the Travers here Aug. 24, with Belmont Stakes winner Palace Malice prepping in the Jim Dandy at Saratoga Saturday and Preakness winner Oxbow slated to run in the Haskell at Monmouth Sunday, while Kentucky Derby winner Orb continues to train up to the race.
Pity the public handicapper who takes a stand against Paynter on Saturday in the $200,000 San Diego Handicap at Del Mar. Better that he or she should come out in favor of burning baby chicks in the city square.
In his capacity as the miracle horse of 2013 and the darling of racing’s social media, Paynter has transcended all known boundaries of rational evaluation. He is the Thoroughbred who came back from the near dead, not only to live and breath, but to run, and run fast. Call him Lazarus. Call him Phoenix. Call him Ishmael.
Anything for a good cause, right?
Two years ago, James Jablon spent a month in a lion’s cage in Hernando, Fla., and raised $160,000 for wildlife research in the process. He referred to his several superficial wounds as “only a scratch.”
In a similar spirit, Melbourne’s Nick le Souef settled into a pet shop window display along with 400 deadly spiders and lived there for three weeks, emerging with pledges of $16,000 for a children’s charity and a healthy fear of anything with eight legs.
Massaging civic leaders is always part of the racetrack management job, and so it was that Joe Harper, early in his tenure at Del Mar, found himself prepping for an appearance at a San Diego Chamber of Commerce meeting. He needed material.
“I knew they’d ask me who I liked that afternoon, but I didn’t have a clue,” Harper said. “So I asked my wife, Barbara, who’d been up until midnight handicapping, to give me her picks.”
LAS VEGAS – The race and sports books here can often resemble Old West ghost towns during the dog days of summer.
The books are empty in the evenings after the NHL and NBA playoffs are over in mid-to-late June, but the mornings and afternoons are deserted even earlier. You can often see more people in the books just trying to get out of the 100-degree heat as opposed to actually betting on sports or the ponies.
Once in awhile it’s fun to poke the creatures in the cage, just to see how they’ll react.
Gary Mandella, the taller of the two training Mandellas, was standing in front of the Del Mar stall of a horse with the unlikely name of Sofast, a French colt freshly off both the plane from Europe and the van from L.A. Sofast was bright, though a tad drawn from the ride, and in much better shape than his trainer, who’d been up since about zero dark thirty busy shipping horses south.
Which means, with defenses low, he was ripe to give an honest answer.
