There are only 281 people with a say in who wins the Eclipse Awards, a fact that makes the appeal of this column limited. Still, if you’ve got nothing better to do …
It should be noted that the obvious oddity in the likely results of this year’s voting will be that the reigning two-time Horse of the Year will not be a champion of anything – the undefeated, reigning two-time Horse of the Year, who was perfect in his four 2014 starts.
Santa Anita Park opens again for business on Friday, buffed to a high sheen, its olive trees and hedges clipped to perfection, statuary polished. With the usual exception of a few marketing wrinkles, current management is doing for the opener what every management has done for years, which is unlock the gates, pass out calendars, and pray that a market for the live presentation of Thoroughbred racing hasn’t disappeared completely into the forgotten recesses of modern sports culture.
John Houseman was an overnight sensation at the age of 71 when he stepped out from behind his role as producer of award-winning films and mentor of acting talent to accept an Oscar for his supporting role in the 1973 movie “The Paper Chase.”
Bertrand Russell finally was recognized with the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950 at age 78, already having filled the first half of the 20th century with his benchmark writings on philosophy, mathematics, history, and social criticism.
Voting has begun to determine 2014’s Eclipse Award winners, and it has provoked sharp differences of opinion. Some of the choices – such as leading trainer and best older horse – require special thought and analysis, but Thoroughbred racing’s top honor, the Horse of the Year title, shouldn’t be as controversial as most people see it.
I would think twice about betting heavily on Dortmund this Saturday. A lofty reputation is not always money in the bank. The opposition is solid, and even though there is much in Dortmund’s favor, they’ve still got to play hard all 90 minutes if they are going to handle the underrated Werder squad from Bremen.
As the Sept. 20 Pennsylvania Derby Day card was playing out, just about everybody was talking about the track bias that appeared to favor horses running on the rail. In the immediate aftermath, I was less sure there was a bias than most and decided to give it some time and then take a critical look at the data.
The 2014 Pennsylvania Derby and Cotillion Stakes at Parx featured the winners of the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks. As soon as they were run and the day’s $10 million handle became public, the phone of the Parx director of racing began to “ring off the hook” with job offers.
Fantasy leagues, social media, foal crops, and the never-ending quest to squeeze every betting dollar out of a willing yet limited customer base – these were the front-burner issues discussed at the Racing and Gaming Symposium conducted this week by the University of Arizona’s Racetrack Industry Program.
The lineup reflected not only the industry’s growing interest in all things technological, but also an understandable weariness with the questions addressed at symposiums of the past that, in the end, had no answers.
Alex Solis, the most recent jockey inducted into the Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame, was walking around this week with an official total of 4,999 winners gathered in the United Stakes and Canada. He was scheduled to ride two horses Friday at Los Alamitos but none Saturday, which is too bad since Saturday will be a good day at the Orange County track, featuring Breeders’ Cup winner Take Charge Brandi in the $350,000 Starlet Stakes for 2-year-old fillies.
Whatever you call the opposite of buyer’s remorse, Becky Ryder’s got it. Call it acquisitor’s unbridled joy.
Ryder, director of the Keeneland Library, is celebrating the recent purchase of the Katey Barrett photographic archives. This is a big deal because a) Barrett’s images of Thoroughbred racing are inspiring, fraught with emotional content and deserving of the widest possible audience, and b) Barrett is still around to take a bow.
