WASHINGTON - If Satish Sanan appears in the winner's circle after the running of the Kentucky Derby, nobody in the sport should begrudge him the triumph. The Indian-born entrepreneur has invested $150 million over the last decade in order to get there, and he acknowledges that he has not spent all of that money wisely.
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DRF Past Performances
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - As silent partners go, Al Eisman might as well spend most of his time in the next room. Sneaking a word in edgewise when the other guy is an endlessly entertaining quote machine like Bill Currin is about as hard as getting the ball from Kobe.
Currin also has the advantage of access. After all, he not only owns half interest in the horses, he trains them, putting him front and center with the media when he ranges far and wide with such runners as Memorette, Outta Here, and their current Kentucky Derby candidate, Stormello.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Get ready to break out the heavy-duty shades later this summer, and not just because of the way the sunshine sparkles on the crystal blue Pacific. More than a mile's worth of powder-gray silica sand-based Polytrack has replaced the dark brown Del Mar main track loam, and boy does that baby bounce the light.
ARCADIA, Calif. - For a teasing moment last Sunday afternoon, as the stubborn Sweet Return led the field into the stretch of the San Juan Capistrano Invitational, there appeared to be a glimmer of a chance that the nightmare Santa Anita meeting experienced by Alex Solis might be softened with a fairy-tale ending.
NEW YORK - The announcement Thursday that the 2008 Breeders' Cup will be run at Santa Anita over a synthetic track, coming just five days after a bizarre running of the Blue Grass Stakes on Polytrack at Keeneland, had to leave many a horseman and horseplayer wondering: Will racing's championship races will be as peculiar and perplexing as this season's final major Derby prep?
ARCADIA, Calif. - There is a certain meteorological justice to the fact that it is raining on the final weekend of the driest Santa Anita Park meeting in recent history. Thank goodness for irrigation.
The storm will supply just enough give in the ground to make the closing day San Juan Capistrano Invitational a sufficiently robust tour of the entire Santa Anita turf course. At nearly 1 3/4 miles, the race officially qualifies these days as a dinosaur. But to end the meet with anything less would betray a grand chunk of California racing history.
ARCADIA, Calif. - It would be easy to assume that the results of the special municipal election held Tuesday in the Northern California town of Dixon represented a rejection of the sport of horse racing, placing it in roughly the same category as a toxic waste dump or a halfway house for crack addicts. Not in our back yard, pal.
NEW YORK - It is tempting to agree with the first wave of public and industry reaction to the American Graded Stakes Committee's unanimous decision to deny Grade 1 status to the three new Breeders' Cup races being offered Oct. 26 at Monmouth: Who are these Blue Meanies at the AGSC? How can they let a Breeders' Cup race be run as an ungraded event? How can million-dollar races that might affect Eclipse Award championships be rated lower than routine $100,000 Grade 3 events of no national consequence?
TUCSON, Ariz. - Whether anyone can beat Curlin in the Derby, whether Jerry Bailey soaking wet can single-handedly lift New York racing to its former glory, or whether Steve Wynn will put priceless art in the clubhouse at Belmont all suddenly paled into insignificance on Monday, when mass murder hit Virginia Tech.
We have become inured to daily stories of mass murder in Iraq - 43 one day, 36 the next, 49 the next - but suddenly mass murder reached us at home, with its bloody reality and horror, and we became reminded that our preoccupation with horse racing is after all a game.