TUCSON, Ariz. - The Ventana Canyon resort here in Tucson is a romantic spot at any time, but speakers at the Racing Symposium last week turned it into a raging passion pit.
First Tom Meeker of Churchill Downs and then Jim McAlpine of Magna Entertainment invoked passion as a new dynamic of racing, urging the fraternity to have passion, embrace change, and show vision.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Here we are, deep in the season, just 10 days until Christmas and still wondering how to spend our bountiful tax cuts on holiday tokens of friendship and affection. Some last-minute ideas:
Yes, there are handicapping books and "how-to" videos and all manner of gambling aids and research tools, including the collectors edition of the 2004 Daily Racing Form Handicappers Expo, which is almost as good as having Mike Watchmaker's home phone number.
TUCSON, Ariz. - What should the American racing industry do about Internet betting exchanges - outlaw them, embrace them or start one of its own?
That was the most interesting and controversial question to emerge from this past week's annual Symposium on Racing here. It is an issue that already is prompting sharp disagreement among racing officials and analysts.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Karma doesn't count for much in a horse race. Usually, it takes a fast horse and the right kind of trip. Still, it never hurts to have a little history on your side - or, in the case of Tom Shapiro, an entire era of California racing.
Shapiro's grandfather, Louis K. Shapiro, bred and owned Native Diver. On Saturday at Hollywood Park, Tom Shapiro and his wife, Deborah, will attempt to win the Native Diver Handicap with their homebred 5-year-old Calkins Road.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - It may come as a harsh surprise to California racing fans that - at least in the eyes of a select panel of executives and staff back at the league office - there was not a single, solitary occurrence during California's racing season worthy of inclusion on a list of 10 candidates for the 2004 "NTRA Moment of the Year."
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - In case there was someone still fuzzy on the concept, last Saturday's $250,000 Hollywood Turf Cup proved once again that the shortest distance between two points is usually a circling band of white, industrial-strength plastic.
Riding to the tactics recommended by trainer Don Burke, Gary Stevens kept Gary Tanaka's Brazilian horse Pellegrino lashed to the inside rail like a tin bunny, fought through a couple of tough scrapes, and then broke for sweet daylight with a furlong left when most of the field was leaning right.
The American Graded Stakes Committee showed general good sense and admirable restraint in its announcement last week of grades for the 2005 stakes schedule. Yet the official lineup of the nation's most important racing still seems at odds with some realities of the sport.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Let's see who has been paying attention. The Vernon O. Underwood Handicap at Hollywood Park on Sunday is named in honor of the man who:
a. Invented a now obsolete piece of office machinery known as the typewriter, named it after himself, and sold a dozen of them to the Hollywood Park front office, where they are still awaiting replacement ribbons.
