On Monday night in Pasadena, Eclipse Award champion Acclamation will receive another honor when the California Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association names him its 2011 Cal-bred horse of the year. To be accurate, the envelope is still sealed, and the Eclipse Award champion sprinter Amazombie deserves a standing “O” as well. But if there is another name other than Acclamation’s inside, look for a recount, or a riot.

The Giants pulled off the 21-17 upset of the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI last Sunday, but the biggest upset according to some was that the sports books in Nevada were open for business Monday morning.

From all the newspaper and Internet articles to talk radio to TV new shows, we heard the sports books here were going to lose millions if the Giants won the Super Bowl because of future-book liability of when they were upward of 100-1 in mid-December when it looked like they wouldn’t even make the playoffs.

In no sport is data more important than in Thoroughbred racing, because billions of dollars in wagers are based on information about horses’ past performances. Yet the industry’s data-gathering is a product of the Stone Age.

Streaks are freaky, make no mistake. Only lately it seems as if there’s one going all the time, in every corner of the racing world, that requires attention paid.

As this is being written, there are only six more shopping days until John Nerud’s 99th birthday, on Feb. 9. But what do you get for the man who has done everything? – at least in Thoroughbred racing.

“I’m starting to walk like an old man, and my blood pressure gets a little high,” Nerud confessed Friday morning from his Long Island, N.Y., home. “But I can still talk.”

LAS VEGAS – With apologies to fans of the Ravens and 49ers, this Super Bowl matchup of Patriots and Giants was the one everyone wanted to see when the conference championship games were played two Sundays ago.

It is impossible to celebrate any running of the Strub Stakes at Santa Anita without wallowing around in a deep pile of horse racing history.

The name itself comes from the founder of the track, Dr. Charles H. Strub, and his family, most recently represented in the management of Santa Anita by Robert P. Strub, who died in 1993 after a battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Cracked heels are usually a problem in January, what with the cold weather, dry skin, and a natural shyness about regular exfoliation. Then there’s Garrett Gomez and Robby Albarado, who took the problem to extremes.

Last year, on the second day of 2011, Albarado was tossed on the way to the track at Fair Grounds and landed right heel-first on a concrete curb along the fence line of the pathway leading from the paddock. Two weeks later he had surgery to repair the fracture, which was serious enough to require a plate and screws.

No experienced moviegoer should be surprised that “War Horse” was among the Oscar nominees for Best Picture – if it was 1944. The movie’s pervasive tone was one of abiding nostalgia infused with a glowing sentimentality that tastefully packaged and sanitized both the horrors of war and the brutal oppression of tenant farming.

Also there was a cute little sick girl.

There are two ways to look at the announcement last week that network television coverage of the Breeders’ Cup is returning to NBC after six years at ESPN.

Pessimists will say that the joint agreement to terminate the ESPN deal two years before its expiration, and the relegation of all but one hour of coverage to the NBC Sports Network (formerly Versus) rather than NBC itself, is a dark sign for the sport. As one commenter on a DRF blog put it last week, “When ESPN dumps your product, it means that you’re toast in the sports world.”