TUCSON, Ariz. - When death took Michael Shagan on Monday morning at the age of 66, it stilled one of the most articulate and knowledgeable voices in American racing. He was the prime architect of the Interstate Horse Racing Act of 1978, the man who inspired it, drafted it, and wrote most of its provisions.
Depending on when you first met him, your remembrance of Mike would differ.
DEL MAR, Calif. - He's big, he's beautiful, and now he is a bona fide California star, with two major wins to his credit and riches looming down the road. As the emergent king of West Coast grass racing, 4-year-old After Market has nothing but upside, as anyone who saw Sunday's Eddie Read Handicap at Del Mar will readily testify.
DEL MAR, Calif. - It seems blasphemous right now to write about anything other than surf, sun and fabulous summertime sport. But the game still hangs together on nuts and bolts (some would say a wing and a prayer), and a few pieces of the necessary hardware were on display Thursday morning at the monthly meeting of the California Horse Racing Board.
NEW YORK - Dear Editor,
How about if I take a half-day and catch that final twilight card out at Belmont and you can just rerun last year's pre-Saratoga column?
You remember, the one that began, "The biggest race at Saratoga this year is neither the Whitney nor the Travers, but the one to see who's going to be running this place two summers from now."
NEW YORK - Horseplayers usually flinch when the subject of parimutuel takeout makes headlines, because the story is typically a discouraging one about an effort to raise the game's already exorbitant rake even higher. This past week, however, it was two exciting innovations with lower takeout that were making encouraging news.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Since there was already a 16-year-old in the room, it seemed like a good idea to ask Ron Ellis what he was doing at that particularly impressionable age.
"I was working the Del Mar meet, walking hots for Larry Sterling, living in a tack room," Ellis said. "And believe me, it wasn't nearly as nice as this one."
DEL MAR, Calif. - The local media swirled like well-dressed locusts Wednesday morning, celebrating the return of racing to San Diego and alighting on anything that gave off a flicker of interest. To his credit, Dan Hendricks didn't flinch a bit when one of them thrust a microphone in his face and asked him to describe how a Thoroughbred trainer starts a typical day.
DEL MAR, Calif. - An informal poll of casual racing fans gathered at a local North San Diego County Starbucks, most of them yipped to the gills on java mocha grande and grooving to the hip sounds of Paul McCartney's latest musical gruel, revealed a wide variety of reactions when the term "Polytrack" was tossed in the air.
TUCSON, Ariz. - Some days are better than others - for the horses, who can't tell us which are their good days until it's too late at the windows; for the big guys, who spend fortunes for yearlings, figuring - like our president with Putin - that they can look into their eyes and fathom their future actions; and for the little guys, who squirrel away hard-earned sawbucks to go tilt with the windmills of cheap claimers.
WASHINGTON - Few trainers have international credentials to match those of Patrick Biancone. He made his reputation in his native France during the 1980s, training the great filly All Along and winning the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe twice. He spent a decade in Hong Kong, where he twice won the Hong Kong Derby. Since 2000, he has operated a successful, high-class stable in the United States; he won a $1 million race in California on Friday.
Now Biancone is at the center of a Kentucky case involving illegal medications, and it could overshadow all of his achievements.