Given the amount of muddy debris cascading down fire-denuded hillsides, the run-off spewing from catch-basins into the sea, and the overwhelmed drainage systems flooding major intersections, references to a glass being half full are in downright poor taste in Southern California right now.
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DRF Past Performances
The first day of winter was officially Tuesday, Dec. 21, but a lot of the country has been experiencing inclement weather for longer than that. We have seen our share of snow games and others played in cold and windy conditions.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Rudy Baez, the pride of Boston and Santo Domingo, has been on the phone to Michael Martinez lately. Before this week, they knew of each other only by name, as brothers in arms, having in common only the way that their lives as Thoroughbred jockeys came to an end. Martinez was paralyzed from the chest down in a crash at Golden Gate Fields last September. Baez suffered a similar fate in an accident at Rockingham Park in 1999.
In sports betting circles, we often talk about regression to the mean, especially as it pertains to trends.
The point spread is the great equalizer, as it’s designed to balance out the wagering on the favorite and underdog and make every game a theoretical 50/50 proposition in which the house keeps its vig. So, when word spreads about a particular trend, the oddsmakers see and read everything that the rest of us do and they eventually tweak the numbers to the point where there is no longer value (and often reverses the trend and making it a losing proposition going forward).
There was a temptation to discount the field for Saturday’s running of the $750,000 CashCall Futurity until the Hollywood Park media guide fell open to the page relating the recent history of the race. A speed-read of the first three finishers over the last five years revealed the winners of a Preakness, a Haskell, a Travers, two Wood Memorials, three Santa Anita Derbies, and a 2-year-old championship.
“I’m glad you called,” said Nick Zito. “I’m really glad you asked.”
Zito needed to get something off his chest.
“Mack Miller was a very, very classy, humble, terrific individual,” Zito said. “Just terrific.”
As limbs go, this one is not very shaky, and Zito has a lot of company in taking such a stand. In the wake of Mack Miller’s death on Dec. 11, at the age of 89, waves of like-minded sentiment have come washing ashore from all corners of the horse racing world.
The triple slayings of horse racing in New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, and California’s solution to save its racing by raising takeout in time of crisis, are crimes of murder and self-immolation unpardonable.
The industry’s responses illustrate that racing has no defense mechanism against the politicians who create and controlit the game, and further crimes can be expected coast-to-coast.
The New Jersey situationfirst, because it is the most heinous of the crimes,involving involves broken promises at best and mass destruction at worst.
France is up, Britain and Ireland are down in purse prospects for 2011. France-Galop, the august body in charge of racing in France, announced last month that prize money would be increased in France by 3 percent next year. This came as something of a surprise as the Pari-Mutuel Urbain (PMU), the French off-track betting system, and the Pari-Mutuel Hippodrome, the on-track betting system, have been competing with newly legislated online rivals since June.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Zenyatta has stirred passions and arguments this year that evoke memories of 1989, when Easy Goer and Sunday Silence polarized the racing community. The two colts' partisans hotly debated their respective merits throughout the year until their final showdown in the Breeders' Cup Classic.
When Sunday Silence held off Easy Goer's late charge and beat his archrival by a neck, the debate ended. Despite the closeness of the finish, almost nobody questioned the fact that Sunday Silence had earned the Horse of the Year title and secured his place in history.