Kyle Frey shook up the laid-back holiday crowd at Santa Anita last Monday with his work aboard the $25,000 claimer Trickonomics, a 4-year-old gelding of modest accomplishments who lit the board with a $79 mutuel in his first collaboration with Frey.
It had happened before. Last year at Golden Gate Fields, it was the same young rider on 3-year-old Zakaroff in the Grade 3 El Camino Real Derby for their $99.60 surprise. Frey had never ridden Zakaroff before.
Thanks to the presence of Instilled Regard, who was right with some of the West’s best 3-year-olds when moved up to second in the roughly run Los Alamitos Futurity, and Principe Guilherme, who won his first two career starts like a potential star, everyone agreed Saturday’s Lecomte Stakes at Fair Grounds was likely the strongest-ever running of that early-season two-turn stepping stone for colts with Kentucky Derby aspirations.
Fifty years ago, Burt Bacharach bought his first racehorse, named Battle Royal, for $15,000. That’s about how much he was worth, but Bacharach was hard to discourage. One horse led to another – Advance Guard, Crumbs, Nikkis Promise – all of them a teasing introduction to eventual success with champion Heartlight No. One and major stakes winners Soul of the Matter and Afternoon Deelites.
The movement toward passage of the ambitiously named Horse Racing Integrity Act picked up a gust of steam this week with the announcement by trainer Graham Motion, trainer of Derby winner Animal Kingdom and champion Main Sequence, that he was signing on as a supporter of the Water Hay Oats Alliance.
Better known as WHOA, the organization has been working hand in glove with the Coalition for Horse Racing Integrity in its two-pronged effort to gain support for the legislation in both the U.S. Congress and the Thoroughbred racing industry at large.
John Shear will celebrate his 97th birthday on Jan. 17. I know this because Shear mentioned the fact last weekend as he was performing his duties at the west end of the Santa Anita Park paddock, where he mans the ropes and rails as the official crossing guard who keeps the customers from getting tangled up with horses going back and forth from the receiving barn.
In a point in time when there seems to be a contest to see how infrequently good horses can race, it is a welcomed development that legitimate Kentucky Derby candidates are competing in these initial days of January, some four months out from the first leg of the Triple Crown.
In order to be eligible for an Academy Award, a movie must comply with a long list of requirements laid out by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. A feature film must be at least 40 minutes in length.
At the very least, it must be shown in a theater in Los Angeles County between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 for no fewer than seven consecutive days, three times a day, for a paid admission.
Richard Baltas awoke on the morning of Jan. 1, 2018, with a tough act to follow. He had just wrapped up his best season as a trainer, capping the year with a final flurry on Dec. 30 with a victory in the Grade 3 Robert J. Frankel Stakes and a 2-3 finish in the Grade 1 American Oaks. In a perfect world, Baltas wished 2017 could go on forever, but then someone pushed the cosmic reset button and it was back to square one.
A writer should be held accountable for what is written. That’s only fair. In this spirit, and with the end of 2017 drawing nigh, an inventory was taken of the past season’s scribblings. I can say without hesitation that the intention was always to inform, perhaps enlighten, sometimes even amuse. Also, too, there was the paycheck.
Bill Nack, who won about 97 Eclipse Awards, once was asked who he was rooting for in a race of national significance. His answer:
“The best story.”
