ARCADIA, Calif. - The Santa Anita Handicap has never been afraid of a little wet weather.
Just ask the folks who were there in 1968, the year Mr. Right dropped his dark head and plowed through the mud to beat Jungle Road, Ala Ram, and Quicken Tree in 2:04.60 for the 1 1/4 miles. Good ones like O'Hara and Tumble Wind were eased, the going was so nasty.
NEW YORK - Just when it looked as if Santa Anita was all set to return to dirt racing this fall, Frank Stronach said last week that he may instead propose yet another experimental surface being used at some European show-jumping rings and the racetrack he owns in Austria.
"It's dirt, it's sand, and there's a small amount of fiber in there," Stronach told the Daily News of Los Angeles last Thursday. "Just picture a beach. It's similar to sand on a beach. This new surface, it's basically natural. There's a little bit of new fibers in but in a very controlled way."
ARCADIA, Calif. - It's breezy and brief, with few punches pulled in its reporting of malfeasance, both admitted and alleged. Welcome to California racing's version of Hush-Hush Magazine - the stewards' minutes - a cross between TMZ and the Congressional Report.
ARCADIA, Calif. - There are realists among the dreamers this time of year. Ed Delaney is one of them. Of the 10 Derby-age youngsters entered in the $150,000 Sham Stakes on Saturday at Santa Anita, only two of them were not rendered eligible to the Triple Crown package earlier this month - Delaney's stakes winner Wolf Tail and the former maiden claimer Straightomidnight.
ARCADIA, Calif. - There was a pretty good push a couple months back to pave the way for Horse of the Year 2009 to be shared somehow by Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta. This effort was beaten back by stodgy traditionalists, who maintained that the Horse of the Year process had precedents that deserved no exceptions and that voters knew the job was dangerous when they took it. I confess to being one of those traditionalists, but I'll try not to be so stodgy.
TUCSON, Ariz. - There are numerous ways to try to extricate yourself from almost any uncomfortable situation, and in recent days we have seen some creative ones.
In a federal court on Long Island, a man named David Brooks is fighting to escape prison on charges of corporate fraud. This is not the first time Brooks has been in the public eye.
NEW YORK - American trainers who sent horses to run in the Dubai World Cup throughout the race's 14 runnings at Nad Al Sheba could always count on the constant factor that closers were unlikely to win on the now defunct track's sandy surface. Only three World Cup winners - Cigar in 1996, Singspiel in 1997 and Electrocutionist in 2006 - came from farther back than fourth, and Cigar and Singspiel were running on a track that was considerably more favorable to closers before a new surface resembling the one at Churchill Downs was installed in 1998.
ARCADIA, Calif. - It is getting on toward late February, that ruthless runt of months, and I know I should be wallowing in all things pertaining to the Kentucky Derby. I should be hammering away at all these preps, named for Mr. Hutcheson, Mr. Lewis, and Mr. Davis, and spinning the results to suit the ultimate story line, which is that there must be 20 horses in the Kentucky Derby field, that they all deserve to be there, but only three or four truly belong.
ARCADIA, Calif. - There are comebacks and then there are comebacks. In December's San Gabriel Handicap, old Lava Man tried, after extensive therapies and rehabilitation, to capture a glimmer of the old spark but failed. Next month at the Fair Grounds, Rachel Alexandra will attempt, after six months on the shelf, to resume her wondrous ways. And on Saturday, after more than a year out of sight and mind, Bob Black Jack returns to competition in the San Carlos Handicap at Santa Anita.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Mortality has been getting more than its share of ink lately, working the racing game in its usual, indiscriminate way.
Mystery novelist Dick Francis was 89. Betty Mabee, of Golden Eagle Farm and Del Mar, was 88. Mary Jones Bradley, owner of Hall of Famer Cougar II, was 90. Fellow turf writer Larry Bortstein was 67. Pedigree analyst Jack Werk was 65. Midwestern trainer Eddie Milligan Sr. was 66, and the young Irish jump jockey Ronan Lawlor was only 21 the other day when he was thrown from a horse into an unforgiving timber post.
