ARCADIA, Calif. - If you think it's easy being a retired Hall of Fame jockey, take a look at Chris McCarron and think again. The guy can't hold down a job.
First he's a movie consultant for a big Hollywood production, doing "race choreography," which sounds like something the stewards ought to investigate. As it turned out, the racing action was the best part of "Seabiscuit," but did Hollywood call for "Racing Stripes?" Their loss.
NEW YORK - Horseplayers can claim to be entirely objective and unsentimental about picking their Kentucky Derby horses all they want. The truth is, though, that everything else being equal or even arguably close, New Yorkers will lean toward a horse emerging from the Wood Memorial, while Californians will take someone from the Santa Anita Derby.
TUCSON, Ariz. - People learn by reading and listening, not by talking.
Some in racing have not learned this lesson, and some disparage racing conferences as social gatherings, belittling them because there is much talk and few immediately tangible or visible results.
It is a narrow view, and those who feel this way in the racing business can benefit by reading two things currently and easily available to them.
SUNLAND PARK, N.M. - Bill Casner stood in the Sunland Park winner's circle on Saturday afternoon as the dying sun bathed the nearby Franklin Mountains in a deep adobe glow. Casner gazed into the distance, toward his native El Paso, then turned his attention to the crowd of more than 15,000 packing the small-scale Sunland Park grandstand behind him.
"This place was dead and didn't know it," Casner said. "For years and years, they never did a dollar's worth of capital improvements. And now look at it. To be able to host a crowd like this on a day like this, it's pretty amazing."
ARCADIA, Calif. - It has been five years since Bob and Beverly Lewis made any sort of impact on the Triple Crown, and that was back in June of 2000 when no one was really paying much attention to a Belmont Stakes diluted by the absence of both Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus and Preakness winner Red Bullet. A nickel for anyone not called Lewis, Lukas, or Douglas who can remember the name of the winner.
NEW YORK - Hawthorne Park's website was carrying the following message Thursday afternoon:
10 cent Superfecta begins at Hawthorne!
Box 6 horses for only $12.00!
Bet a little and win A Lot!
The math was wrong (even for a dime, a six-horse superfecta box costs $36, not $12), but the enthusiasm was forgivable. When Hawthorne takes its first 10-cent superfecta bets on Saturday, following the lead of Hinsdale Greyhound Park and Sam Houston Race Park, it will become the first major-market Thoroughbred signal to offer super-exotic bets at deep discounts.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Racing takes strange twists and turns, and so it goes that trainer Mike Puhich, Seattle born and raised, will find himself on Saturday afternoon in a windswept corner of New Mexico trying to win a half-million-dollar race with a Kentucky-bred colt named Southern Africa who established his worth by winning two small races in England.
ARCADIA, Calif. - It wasn't exactly the Sharks and the Jets, but there was definitely a rumble brewing.
At one end of the Santa Anita walking ring, the worshipful followers of Star Over the Bay gathered, some two dozen strong, resplendent in their red and black outfits. At the other end, dressed in stylish taupes and navy blues, a small army of Meteor Storm's true believers milled and mumbled, waiting for the word to throw down.
