NEW YORK - Saturday's Arkansas Derby and Blue Grass, the two biggest remaining preps for the May 2 Kentucky Derby, are races that seem headed in drastically different directions. While the Blue Grass remains a Grade 1 race, one official notch above the Arkansas Derby, the recent history of both events suggests those rankings should be reversed.
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DRF Past Performances
ARCADIA, Calif. - Writing with confidence about a jockey and his agent is always taking a chance. Things can change fast, much faster than the 24-hour news cycle can accommodate. It's better to save the subject matter for a blog or a tweet.
TUCSON, Ariz. - Comedy and tragedy share the same stage, and events in Maryland would be comic if they were not so tragic for Maryland racing.
The sport could use a few laughs these days, with the grimness of Ernie Paragallo's "thin horses" and Jeff Mullins's Aqueduct doings unraveling all the positive PR on security and the well-being of horses. Add the cost to the historic tradition of the Preakness and Pimlico, and you have a very unfunny mess in Maryland.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Events always seem to rise to the occasion of the Kentucky Derby, which means April is never boring.
Last Saturday dawned innocently enough, in both L.A and Long Island, where the most important races would be run. A few hours later, I Want Revenge had turned the Wood Memorial into his personal thrill ride, while trainer Jeff Mullins made his own set of headlines. Then at Santa Anita, the anticipated showdown between The Pamplemousse and Pioneerof the Nile was rendered to the pile of speculative fiction.
ARCADIA, Calif. - On Wednesday, at Santa Anita Park, a roundtable discussion regarding the fate of retired Thoroughbred racehorses will be hosted by the California Retirement Management Account, known as Carma. This comes at a perfect moment, since recent events indicate that the wolves are sniffing at the door, and it's a bad time to be a Thoroughbred without a job.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Once you get past the wry joke of a horse named Chocolate Candy owned by weight-loss entrepreneur Jenny Craig, the rest is easy.
"It is kind of tongue in cheek, when you think about it," Craig said this week. "Believe it or not, we do have chocolate cake on the menu, which isn't too far from chocolate candy."
ARCADIA, Calif. - The Alex Solis of a year ago was not a pretty sight. There were rumblings of domestic strife, uncharacteristic public outbursts, dramatic departures from his typically positive personality.
On the racetrack, Solis was still winning races, but something was amiss. Once known for his heroic moves and flawless, powerful form, Solis had become tentative, careful . . . what's the word?
"I was afraid," he said.
ARCADIA, Calif. - It's April 1, so watch out for the pranksters. But here's one you can believe . . .
Jake's horse won the Dubai World Cup. He won it like a longshoreman kicking kittens, by 14 lengths, better known as a Dubai city block. He taunted them, trashed them, and then spiked the ball in a $6 million end zone. Albertus Minimus. Asthmatic Boy. Casino Dry Hole. They made Well Armed look like the second coming of Bucephalus, and he made them look, well, ordinary.
NEW YORK - As the Triple Crown season approaches, so does reopening the discussion - and the wounds - that followed the death of Eight Belles after last year's Kentucky Derby. Mass-media commentators and consumers who have basically ignored racing since last year's classics and their aftermath will return their attention to the sport for a couple of months, and many will be asking the same question: What has racing done to fix itself?