DEL MAR, Calif. - There are easier ways to make a living than trying to take the lead in a 1 1/16-mile race at Del Mar from the outside post in a field of eight. Bear baiting and alligator wrestling come immediately to mind.
Adventure usually awaits those who dare. Still, it was a sound strategy, figured John Sadler, since Del Mar's main track has been leaning toward speed, especially going two turns, and Sadler's horse, Taste of Paradise, had the gas to get it done.
WASHINGTON - At no moment of his racing career did Fighting Furrari display any special talent. He was modestly bred. He was chronically slow. He ran mostly in cheap races at minor-league tracks and managed to win only once in 16 tries. He was an unlikely candidate to become the most-watched Thoroughbred in America.
DEL MAR, Calif. - John Russell fished around in his considerable vocabulary and settled on the word that best described the racehorse named Precisionist.
Russell called him glamorous.
That he was, striking from every angle, his chestnut coat aglow like sunlight on lacquered redwood. Precisionist was both large and graceful, classically constructed, a dreamwork of selective Thoroughbred breeding. In the words of the wise guy on the rail, Precisionist looked fast just standing still.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - They're back.
Empire Maker and Funny Cide return to the races Sunday for the first time since the Belmont Stakes June 7 in separate preps for their rematch in the Travers 20 days later. If screenwriters could script the outcome, Empire Maker would romp in Saratoga's Jim Dandy, Funny Cide would blow away the field in Monmouth's Haskell, both would run identically stratospheric Beyer Speed Figures, and the world would spend the next three weeks debating their showdown.
DEL MAR, Calif. - The Whitney Handicap Saturday at Saratoga and the San Diego Handicap Sunday at Del Mar have at least one thing in common. Azeri isn't running in either race.
Beyond that, the Whitney is getting all the ink. Saratoga's got the one-two finishers from last year's Breeders' Cup Classic. They've got national TV and the Hall of Fame weekend and a swarm of suits from the NTRA. The whole world will be watching.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - A year ago at Saratoga, two unusual performances by 3-year-olds defied conventional training and handicapping wisdom, prompting similar experiments that may have influenced last year's Breeders' Cup Classic and may determine the outcome of Saturday's Whitney Handicap.
DEL MAR, Calif. - It's a pretty tough week when you lose both Bob Hope and Kona Gold.
Hope was around for a hundred years, literally. In the case of Kona Gold, it has only seemed that way. Few horses have occupied such a broad and satisfying swath of racing history, while maintaining such a high set of expectations.
WASHINGTON - When Tom McDonough was appointed chairman of the Maryland Racing Commission this month, his principal credential was his love of the sport. He had never held a position in the racing-business industry, and he didn't know much about the workings of the commission.
He met Mike Hopkins, the board's executive secretary, and asked, "By the way, is there any pay for this job?"'
"Thirty-four cents a mile," Hopkins informed him.
McDonough said he expected to be having several lunches and breakfasts with racing-industry leaders to get acquainted with them.
TUCSON, Ariz. - The vivid imagination of author Laura Hillenbrand, evident not only in "Seabiscuit" but also in her recent long New Yorker magazine narrative of her debilitating experience with chronic fatigue syndrome, has brought her fame and fortune. She is, without question, a superb storyteller.
But neither her finely drawn portrait of jockey Red Pollard in "Seabiscuit" nor the movie based on Hillenbrand's book reach the lyrical heights of three poems written by Pollard's daughter, Norah Pollard Christianson.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - All three Grade 1 stakes on Saratoga's opening weekend featured powerhouse performances by important fillies. Taking nothing away from Lady Tak's explosive victory in the Test and Sightseek's dominant cakewalk in the Go for Wand, the most satisfying of the trio may have been Voodoo Dancer's triumph in the Diana.