One would think by now that Garrett Gomez would have had his fill of the 2010 Triple Crown. What should have been a trip on the Good Ship Lollipop quickly turned into a voyage of the damned, about two steps out of the Churchill Downs starting gate, and never got any better.
"And you know, I was really looking forward to the Triple Crown this year," Gomez said.
NEW YORK - If it had been up to a horseplayer, the Greeks and their wooden horse would never have made it through the gates of Troy. Horseplayers are contrarians by definition, and if something looks too easy, their first impulse is to bet against it. They're usually right, since favorites lose two out of every three races, sometimes at underlaid prices that don't accurately reflect their true chances of victory.
NEW YORK Ultimately, horse races are run to determine the fastest Thoroughbred over a given distance. Equally important is the search to discover who is most adept at passing his talent on to future generations.
That was the reason behind the establishment of the Derby Stakes, better known in America as the Epsom Derby. First run at Epsom in 1780 at one mile, it has been run at 1 1/2 miles since 1781, serving as the template for the definitive 3-year-old race in every country with a Thoroughbred industry.
New York racing just got a $25 million loan bailout from the state, but it has also lost Richard Migliore, so at best it's a short-term push, although a long-term loss. Migliore's value to the franchise: priceless.
Athletes like Migliore come around only once in a very long while. If you operate a team blessed with one of them − or in this case a racing circuit − every day is a good PR day when they show up for work. Transcending the field of play, they become assets of civic proportions, every bit as important as clean streets and libraries.
Forgive Joe Cantey if he doesn't show up at Belmont Park this Saturday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Temperence Hill's 53-1 shocker over Derby winner Genuine Risk and Preakness winner Codex. Lord willing and the creek don't rise, he'll be in Mississippi, blowing plates out of the sky at the U.S. Open Sporting Clays Championship near Harrah's Casino in Tunica.
"If the Mississippi River is flooded, I'll find a television somewhere to watch the race," said the former trainer, now proprietor of Heritage Farm Shooting Sports near his native Camden, S.C.
NEW YORK - The 142nd Belmont Stakes on Saturday is far from a vintage one on paper, with no Derby or Preakness winner in the race, much less a Triple Crown on the line, and a ragtag field that has combined to win only 3 of 22 career starts in graded stakes on the dirt. On the brighter side, it should be a dandy horse race as the centerpiece of what's shaping up as the best card of racing in New York this year.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - On Memorial Day of 1945 -- it was a Tuesday -- a crowd of 64,670 gathered at Jamaica Racetrack on Long Island to celebrate the end of the war in Europe, three weeks earlier, and the lifting of the ban on racing, imposed in January of that year. In the bargain they got to see Hoop Jr., the subsequent winner of the delayed Kentucky Derby, take a division of the Wood Memorial with Eddie Arcaro.
That was a pretty good day.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - They used to come to California all the time, by the wagon load. Champions of the East, with nothing really to prove, leaving their midseason comfort zone to spread the word that Jim Morrison was drinking his bath water when he wrote, "The West is the best."
It didn't always work out. Kelso was a bust in two Hollywood Park starts. Arts and Letters broke down. Foolish Pleasure flopped. And don't even ask about Seattle Slew. Until he got to Hollywood Park, he'd never lost a race. Maybe it was the time change.
The headlines have been brutal.
"Hayward Faced With Crisis" ...
"CEO Hayward Under Siege" ...
"Hayward's Blunders Mount" ...
So I put in a call to Charlie Hayward, president and CEO of the New York Racing Association, to see how he was holding up.
"Wrong Hayward," Hayward said.
The weekend after the Preakness, the focus of American racing usually turns to the premier track on the eastern seaboard. For decades that has been Belmont Park, which offered by far the best and richest racing in the region for two and a half months until Saratoga opened and offered even better and richer racing.