ARCADIA, Calif. - Everyone knew the risks, except for Unusual Sunrise. Still, he was the one who paid the ultimate price on Sunday at Santa Anita when the 4-year-old gelding with the 0-14 record suffered a fatal injury on a track that had been battered by two weeks of steady rain.
The reality of Sunday's first and only race was harsh. Five horses started, four finished, and everybody felt just rotten. Especially Barry Abrams.
NEW YORK - On Friday, Gulfstream Park decided to recognize Mr. Light's world record of 1:31.41 for a mile last Monday. Track officials quite properly took this sporting matter quite seriously, remeasuring the new turf course over which it was set and retiming tapes of the race, before certifying the historic clocking.
ARCADIA, Calif. - A great trainer once said that the hardest part of his job was knowing when not to run.
Okay, it was Bill Mott, and it's pretty clear what Mott meant. Everything about the game is geared toward participation. No one gets points for staying in the barn. The pressure to run is built into the system, emanating daily from the owners, horseplayers, track management, agents, and media. And, yes, even from the trainers themselves.
NEW YORK - Now that Churchill Downs has raised the guaranteed purse for the Kentucky Derby from $1 million to $2 million, it needs to address two more pressing issues involving the race: Who is eligible, and who is also-eligible, to run for that larger purse?
ARCADIA, Calif. - The marketing geniuses in horse racing have been harping for years about the need to plug the game into contemporary culture. Schemes to lure the youth of America have ranged from fraternity and sorority promotions to visions of the "edgy" actress Lori Petty draped on Santa Anita's statue of Seabiscuit, filming an National Thoroughbred Racing Association commercial.
ARCADIA, Calif. - It is a natural tendency to worry about the well-being of an 8-year-old gelding, once ranked near the top of his class, who goes nearly a year without winning, then finishes last against horses he once would have handled for fun.
It also should be of concern when a rugged old battler of stakes-winning quality emerges from retirement at the age of 11 to lose a race against mediocre foes, then disappears again from the scene.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The last time a trainer won four races on the same day at Santa Anita Park, he celebrated by stripping off his coat and tie and rolling around in the grass outside his barn, then spent the next several months bathing in the afterglow of the remarkable achievement.
That was Richard Mandella, who dominated the 2003 Breeders' Cup program with his victories in the Juvenile, the Juvenile Fillies, the Turf (on a dead heat), and the Classic. If a trainer ever had a better day, it's a well-kept secret.
NEW YORK - The La Brea at Santa Anita last Monday, won by Alphabet Kisses, was the 100th and last Grade 1 race of the year in the United States. An accounting of the year's 100 top-ranked races yields some unexpected leaders, different in many cases from both the national leaderboards and the likely Eclipse Award winners.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Happy New Year. For those with hangovers, fair warning. Here's a sunny appreciation of 2004 in verse. Apologies to Byron, Keats, Shelley, Ogden Nash, Roger Angell, and all the real poets who write on subway walls. And thanks to the men, women, and horses of Thoroughbred racing who made 2004 so memorable.
Look out below, it's time again
To rifle through the garbage bin
And muse about what just transpired,
Who did the job and who got fired.
And spread the tales of racing's pomp,
Of champions and workers' comp.
