INGLEWOOD, Calif. - There is nothing to gain. You people are greedy. The horse has done enough.
That was the tone of the e-mails trainer Doug O'Neill read in September, when it was announced that Lava Man, the 8-year-old seven-time Grade 1 winner, was back in training after a 14-month retirement. The anger in those messages caught O'Neill by surprise.
"I got e-mails from people that didn't know me saying how greedy I am," O'Neill said on a recent weekend morning at his Hollywood Park stable.
WHO'S HOT
Manoel Cruz
Of the three jockeys fighting for the leading rider title at the Tropical at Calder meet, Cruz had the most success last week, winning eight races to vault back atop the standings in defense of his 2008 crown. Cruz recorded a pair of hat tricks on Saturday and Sunday's programs, with all six of those victories coming for different trainers.
Luis Arrango
WHO'S HOT
With jockey Julien Leparoux missing the final two days of the meet last week because of riding engagements in Japan, Calvin Borel was widely expected to win the riding title.
He did, or more accurately, he and Leparoux shared it. Borel won three races Saturday, closing day, to tie Leparoux with 27 winners, but he could not surpass him after Leparoux had won 11 races with 32 mounts over the first four days of racing last week.
Borel was a bit unlucky, with 11 runner-up finishes over the final week; Leparoux had one runner-up finish.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - By sheer volume, trainer Gary Contessa has been the dominant force in New York the last three winters. He has won more races (210) during the last three inner-track meets than any other trainer in large part because he has had more than twice as many starters (1,293) as any other trainer.
But Contessa said he believes that dominance could come to an end this winter. Sure, he will have roughly 70 to 75 horses based in New York, but that might put him on a little more equal footing with the likes of Bruce Levine, who has been runner-up the last three years.
WHO'S HOT
Levine's 'Buddy's'
Look who's on the Triple Crown trail! Though Buddy's Saint's 82 Beyer Speed Figure made him the second-slowest Remsen winner since the figures became available in 1991, you've got to love the multiple moves put in by the Bruce Levine-trained 2-year-old; plus, any juvenile capable of running a 101 in the fall, as he did as a second-time starter in the Nashua, will conceivably have some 110 horsepower under the hood somewhere down the line.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Richard Englander, who won the Eclipse Award as the leading owner in 2001 and 2002, will try his hand at a different aspect of the sport when he becomes a jockey agent for DeShawn Parker. Parker, whose 288 wins through Tuesday tied him for third nationally this year, will move his tack from Mountaineer Racetrack in West Virginia, where he is the leading rider at the fall meet, to Aqueduct after Christmas, according to Englander.
Englander plans to bring Parker to New York in the next few weeks to make introductions to some New York trainers.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Life Is Sweet will skip Saturday's $150,000 Bayakoa Handicap at Hollywood Park and may start in the $150,000 San Gorgonio Handicap at Santa Anita on Jan. 2, trainer John Shrireffs said Wednesday.
The winner of the Breeders' Cup Ladies' Classic at Santa Anita on Nov. 6, Life Is Sweet was the 124-pound highweight for the Bayakoa, which is run over 1 1/16 miles on the main track. Shirreffs and owner Marty Wygod considered the Bayakoa as recently as last weekend but have opted to point for a 2010 campaign.
Shining First Dash caught owner Gary Muller and trainer Dennis Ekins's attention in the spring when the 2-year-old Quarter Horse colt was approaching his first start at Los Alamitos.
The public was not as impressed. Shining First Dash was 51-1 for his debut on May 2, a price that was fine with Muller, especially when a half-length win produced a $104 mutuel.
Shining First Dash has since gone on to qualify for three futurities - and finished second in two of them, the $426,000 Governor's Cup Futurity and the $1.27 million Golden State Million.
Zenyatta made the final start of her career at Santa Anita, and now will make her final public appearance at Santa Anita. She will parade at Santa Anita on opening day, Dec. 26, which is always one of the best attended days on the Southern California racing calendar.
Zenyatta, owned by Jerry and Ann Moss and trained by John Shirreffs, completed a perfect 14-race career with a victory last month in the Breeders' Cup Classic at Santa Anita's Oak Tree meeting. She was honored at Hollywood Park, where she is stabled, between races last Sunday.