July 5, 2009

Sparklers

There wasn't much in the way of parimutuel fireworks in the holiday weekend's graded stakes -- 11 of the 14 winners were 5-2 or less -- but there were plenty of sparkling performances:

*Presious Passion, a personal favorite and perhaps the most dramatic Grade 1 horse around, made things awfully interesting again en route to victory in the G1 United Nations. His running line tells the story:

1-12    1-20    1-20    1-13    1-8    1-2 

Yes, that's 12 in front after an opening quarter in 22.20 (in an 11-furlong race); 20 in front through a half in 45.20 and six furlongs in 1:09.81; 13 in front after a mile in 1:34.67, 8 in front after 10 furlongs in 1:59.07 and two in front at the wire in 2:10.97. Lauro was second behind him at every call, making up 18 lengths in the final five furlongs, six of them into the winner's final furlong of 11.90. Presious Passion, who let rivals catch all the way up to him before digging in and rerallying in two previous victories this year was winning the U.N. for the second straight year.

*Gozzip Girl established herself as the clear leader of the nation's 3-year-old grass fillies with a 3 1/4-length runaway in the G1 $700k American Oaks at Hollywood Sunday. Eleventh early and fifth after a mile, she showed a top-class turn of foot suddenly blowing the race open just inside the eighth pole. Steve Anderson reports she might stick to 10 furlongs but try dirt next time out, in the Alabama at Saratoga.

*Two expensive and exciting 3-year-old sprinters beat their elders on separate coasts Sunday. First, Munnings won the four-horse Tom Fool at Belmont, beating Riley Tucker by 2 1/4 lengths in 1:21.08. Munnings (Coolmore/Pletcher/Speightstown/$1.7m 2yo) was coming off a 5 1/4-length score over 3-year-olds in the Woody Stephens, where he covered the same distance in 1:20.63. Then at Hollywood, Zensational (Zayat/Baffert/Unbridled's Song/$700k 2yo) led all the way to score by a length in the G1 Triple Bend in 1:21.34.

*Kensei, third to Munnings in the Woody Stephens, blossomed in his first start at a mile or more, winning the G2 Dwyer at Belmont Saturday by 3 1/4 lengths in 1:40.47 for 8.5f, good for a Beyer of 107. Warrior's Reward, pounded to 4-5, stumbled badly at the start, was 18 lengths back after half a mile, and finished well to be third, beaten 5 1/2 lengths.

*Informed Decision, the 4-year-old Mondarchos filly who won the G1 Madison and the G1 Humana Distaff in her last two starts, ran her career record to 8 for 10 with an easy 4 3/4-length score in the G3 Chicago Handicap at Arlington Saturday. Informed Decision has won five straight, all stakes, dating back to last fall.

*The weekend's only graded stakes winner at more than 6-1 came in the G2 Suburban Handicap at Belmont Saturday and was especially popular with one member of my family: My mother, a holiday weekend houseguest.

She hadn't been to Belmont in a decade ("I remember more people being here in the past," she correctly noted) but wanted to come out for the Saturday stakes races. She didn't play the Dwyer or the Prioress, but she likes dry martinis and gray horses, so she sprung for $2 across on Dry Martini ($23.60, $8.30, $5.10).

The victory made Dry Martini, a 6-year-old Slew Gin Fizz gelding, a millionaire in his 26th career start. Finallymadeit, who led to the stretch and held on for fourth, also topped the $1 million mark while making his 47th career start.

--Thanks to all for the 148 comments in 48 hours on the medication thread in the two previous posts, and please feel free to continue contributing. Comments are still open on the post below.

Posted by Steven Crist on Jul 5, 2009 at 11:40:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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July 3, 2009

Medication: RSVP/ Part 2

Please continue commenting on the previous post in the comments section for this one. Thanks to all for the many thoughtful and provocative submissions in the past 24 hours.

Posted by Steven Crist on Jul 3, 2009 at 5:22:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (50)

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July 2, 2009

Medication: RSVP

I've been asked to make a speech next month and I'd like your help.

I've been invited to speak at the Jockey Club’s Round Table Conference in Saratoga Aug. 23 about “the way Thoroughbred racing medication issues are perceived by bettors, the public and the media.” In order to collect and present a representative range of viewpoints, I invite readers to share their opinions and recommendations on this thorny topic -- right here in the comment section of this post.

I'm hesitant to frame what I hope will be a lively discussion here by posing any questions at this point. One of the things I'm curious about is which aspects of the entire topic are of your greatest interest or concern. Since I've got 52 days until the speech, perhaps I'll come back to you with some more specific queries before then. For now, I'd just like to see how the discussion begins and where it goes.

If your comments exceed Typepad's capacity to display them all, I'll keep reposting this item with a new comment section as often as necessary. I don't want anyone's contributions to drop off the bottom of this page if we get to 101 responses.

I thank everyone in advance for participating and helping out here. I know many of you feel passionately about this issue, and I appreciate your taking the time to make your voice heard.

Posted by Steven Crist on Jul 2, 2009 at 5:58:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (100)

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June 29, 2009

Rachel 111, Zenyatta 104, but...

...of course that's an incomplete comparison between the performances turned in Saturday by Rachel Alexandra in the Mother Goose and Zenyatta in the Vanity. The figs tell us how fast, relative to the speed of the tracks at Belmont and Hollywood Saturday, each ran from point A to point B, but don't incorporate a lot of less-quantifiable factors: the inherent differences between dirt and synthetic racing; the individuals' different running styles, the difference between a developing 3-year-old and a mature 5-year-old; the debatable effect of the higher weight carried by Zenyatta and the ground she always loses with her wide, late move; or the fact that Rachel Alexandra was clearly geared down at the end of her race.

Having said all that, and with all due respect to an undefeated champion, Rachel Alexandra's performance was clearly the more purely brilliant of the two, as is her 2009 campaign to date. In her last three starts, over the three Triple Crown tracks, Rachel Alexandra has won the Kentucky Oaks by 20 1/4 lengths, beaten males including the Derby winner in the Preakness, and won the Mother Goose by 19 1/4 lengths. Has there has ever been a more impressive trio of achievements by a filly in the first half of a 3-year-old campaign?

Ruffian won her first five starts as a 3-year-old by a combined 37 lengths, including the Acorn, Mother Goose and CCA Oaks. Rachel Alexandra is 6 for 6 this year, winning by a combined 59 lengths.

Download Ruffian[1]

Download RachelAlexandra063009

--Here were the straight-betting pools for the Mother Goose and Vanity:

There were small minus pools in the win pool at Belmont and the place pool at Hollywood. Someone wrote privately and asked how there could have been a minus win pool in the Mother Goose since Rachel Alexandra attracted "only" 82.6 percent of the betting and the track is required (under a 16 percent takeout) to pay back 84 percent of the pool. The answer is that the track is required to pay back a 5 percent profit ($2.10 for $2) on that 82.6 percent of the pool, raising the payback rate of 86.7 percent. So there was an $18,698.62 shortfall that was made up proportionately by whoever handled the bets -- NYRA's share came to only $1.162, the rest from OTB's and simulcast outlets.

--It has taken way too long, but today the New York State Racing and Wagering Board announced it is writing directives to allow superfecta betting in races with 7 scheduled betting interests, down from 8, and with 6 actual starters arfter scratches, down from 7.

It's a start, but the even sillier rule that needs to be changed is the one prohibiting superfectas in races with coupled entries. The only justification that has ever been offered for this inane regulation is that having both a 1 and a 1a in the top four finishers would "confuse" the public as to the winning combination. Please. The poor old public figures this out all the time with trifecta wagering, where there is no such prohibition.

This came up recently in the Grade 1 Manhattan on Belmont Stakes Day, a wide-open race that would have drawn a huge superfecta pool an hour before the Belmont. But no superfecta was offered because there had been two coupled entries Proudinsky (who was scratched) and Zambesi Sun, and Optimer and Court Vision.

Posted by Steven Crist on Jun 29, 2009 at 4:31:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (46)

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June 27, 2009

Cinchy Saturday?

Lucky's Race & Sports Book, which has eight locations in Nevada, has posted an interesting prop on today's two heavy odds-on propositions:

2/7 ($2.57 for $2 to us parimutuel types) that Rachel Alexandra wins the Mother Goose AND Zenyatta wins the Vanity;

3/2 ($5.00 for $2) that one of them wins and one of them loses;

12/1 ($26.00 for $2) that they both lose.

On paper both races are mismatches that would have both of them going off at 1-5 even without the additional fan-club action from casual fans and souvenir-ticket buyers. Even the most stubborn contrarians would have trouble making rational cases against either one.

In theory, Zenyatta has a bigger hurdle, because the handicap conditions of the Vanity have her conceding from 13 to 18 pounds to her opponents, while all Mother Goose entrants carry 121. If either is the slightest bit vulnerable, however, it might be Rachel Alexandra on grounds of how the race might be run. The two other fillies with early speed, Malibu Prayer and Flashing, are drawn to her outside, at least raising the possibility of her getting embroiled in some sort of an early tussle.

[Update 12:35 pm:] Hopeful Image and Don't Forget Gil are late scratches from the Mother Goose, leaving a three-horse field.

The Mother Goose is scheduled for 5:12 pm Eastern time as the 9th at Belmont, and the Vanity will go 18 minutes later at 5:30 pm ET as the 4th at Hollywood.

--It's sunny and in the 70's in New York today, with only a 30 percent chance of isolated thunderstorms before evening, making it so far the nicest day here since the Belmont Stakes three weeks ago. (The 5th and 6th races have been taken off the grass; the 7th, 8th and 10th, the races surrounding the Mother Goose in the $350k guaranteed late Pick-4, remain on turf.)

Friday's last race at Belmont on a twilight card had to be cancelled after a ferocious storm hit the track while the horses were in the paddock for the finale.

The cancellation made the pick-4 and pick-6 pay out with an "all" in the final leg to the tune of $164 for $2 in the pick-4 and $12,926 in the pick-6. There had been one Pick-6 combo alive to each of four horses in the 9th, two of them apparently in Canadian currency. Here were the will-pays if the 9th had been run:

--Serious question: Why was Sovereign Fund 6-1 instead of 20-1 in Friday night's fifth race at Hollywood?

Sovereign Fund, a 3-year-old Giant's Causeway colt and half-brother to Marsh Side, raced twice last fall in New York for trainer Barclay Tagg, finishing a distant 7th and a distant 10th without encountering any trouble or displaying any ability. He showed up Friday night off an eight-month layoff, now in Neil Drysdale's care, as a twice-thrashed maiden facing multiple winners in a N1x allowance race. His pp's showed two Beyers of 60 and 52 in a race where the top contenders routinely earn figures in the mid-to-high 80's.

When I saw he was the third choice at 4-1 on the morning line, I honestly thought it was a typographical error. How could a horse beaten 10 1/2 lengths at 13-1 in a maiden race eight months ago be 4-1 in an allowance race in his next start? But the Hollywood linemaker clearly knows his customers better than I do: Sovereign Fund was 4-1 or 5-1 through most of the betting before drifting late. He finished sixth, beaten 10 lengths while beating one horse.

It's not as if I had a good opinion on the race myself: I took a shine to a 13-1 shot from low-percentage connections who finished only a head in front of Sovereign Fund. But I remain baffled and curious: Was this serious betting action on a horse surrounded by whispers and high expectations, or just proof that bettors won't let anything ridden by Garrett Gomez, champion or chihuahua, go off at more than 6-1?

Posted by Steven Crist on Jun 27, 2009 at 12:31:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (40)

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June 24, 2009

Night and Day

There's been a lot of talk here the last few days about the feasibility of running the Kentucky Derby at night, prompted by Churchill Downs's three-Fridays experiment with night racing that began last week. My initial impulse was to regard this as nothing more than idle and fanciful speculation, as no one at NBC or Churchill Downs has ever seriously proposed moving the race into primetime, but a couple of smart people in the television world tell me it's not the craziest idea they've ever heard.

"My first impulse was to laugh," a veteran producer of major races said in an email message, "but as the concept sinks in I having a hard time thinking why it won't be considered, although I have not heard a single rumor to that effect. My reasoning is all about economics. Just as every other major sport has moved its championship events to the evening why wouldn't the Derby? The obvious issue would be weather. It would be a disaster to run on a dark. cool, rainy night.

"That said, there is much more viewership in the evening and television networks struggle mightily to sell the commercial time in the afternoon. Honestly not sure if the inventory would be easier or harder to sell. If night racing would attract a larger rights payment and more money to be made for the presenting network then everything could be in play. Churchill has shareholders to report to and a very disciplined management team aimed at meeting or exceeding financial expectations. In my opinion tradition will play very little part in the decision.

"I think the Derby has three or 4 more years left on its current deal with NBC so I would be surprised if anything changed short term. I would expect to see Churchill consider more experimental night racing in the future. Perhaps Stephen Foster Day, which seemingly underperforms many of the "Super Saturday" concept days around the nation. It will be interesting to see how they do this Friday and next Thursday."

--Four of today's five grass races at Belmont are still on the turf, including three of the four in the $154k double-carryover pick-6 sequence. Only the 5th, a turf sprint, has been moved to the main track.

The condition of the turf course, which hasn't been used since last Wednesday, will be a key factor today. It's being called "yielding," but it's anyone's guess. There hasn't been as much rain the last couple of days as in the preceding week, and the next dose isn't supposed to arrive until tonight. The first race, scheduled for 1 p.m., should offer some clues.

After 17 late scratches, the pick-six sequence has fields of 7, 6, 11, 7, 10 and 10, a mere 323,400 possible combos that I hope to whittle down by around 99.8 percent by the time the thing starts at 2:30 pm.

1:35 pm: "Yielding" may be an understatement. The opener, for $25k N3L claimers, was run in 1:46.57 for a mile and a sixteenth, more than eight seconds off the course record. Favored Day Dee tired badly after getting clear in 24.24 and 49.57, and second choice Mask and Wig stalked from second, took over through 6f in 1:14.57, and won by two lengths.

2:20 pm: It's pouring again here 4.7 miles northeast at Belmont but not there at the moment. Races 6, 8 and 9 still scheduled for the grass.

2:45 pm: Here's the $624 play, as much as I felt like investing amid tricky races and uncertain weather. The first leg broke slightly the best way for me, as I leaned against the longtime 0-for-lifers in the field (like 0-for-15 Esquivalience at 5-2) and focussed on the more lightly-raced Saint Midas ($8.90) and the steamy firster, 2-1 Scholarly Pursuit, who ran 1-2 in that order. That keeps alive my C tickets, which I hope survive until the 8th race, where I have the shakiest of A singles in Nedjma. She hasn't been out since November and the 7f distance may be too short, but she's just a notch better than today's opponents and drops into allowance company after five straight stakes tries last fall. I just didn't know where else to take a shot. 

3:50 pm: Arggh. A 5-1 A (Storm Hope) failed to catch a 5-1 C (Quiet On the Tee), so I'm down to a pretty hopeless 2x1x2. I thought Storm Hope, steadied and shuffled back to 9th at the top of the stretch, was best but I might be prejudiced.

4:50 pm: Technically lasted another hour, but Nedjma didn't fire her best shot finishing an even third and I wouldn't have used Crazy Catlady ($27.40, 9th choice in a field of 10) against her if you'd given me $5k in counterfeit money to play.

There are 121 combos alive into the finale, 106 of them on the four favorites, ranging from 35 on Sarah's Sally ($15,408) to just one on Jackpot Julie ($539,292). Only two of the 10 are uncovered: Cat Grace (#5) and Cottage Industry (#8). Good luck if you're still in it....

5:25 pm:...and congratulations if you were still in it and were one of the 16 tickets alive to Carmen's Kiss ($7.90). The sequence returned $33,705 for 6/6, more than the posted will-pay of $29,960. Since the will-pay worked out to 18 tickets rather than 16, have to think that there were two tickets alive to scratched horses. For wil-pay purposes, those tickets were assumed transferred to the morning-line favorite, Carmen's Kiss, but by post time there was $44,971 bet on Sarah's Sally and $41,945 on Carmen's Kiss, so those two tickets were apparently switched to Sarah's Sally.

Posted by Steven Crist on Jun 24, 2009 at 12:16:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (43)

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June 21, 2009

Wacky Weekend Payoffs

It was a light weekend on the graded-stakes front, but a peculiar and interesting one when it came to pick-6 carryovers and payoffs on both coasts.

On Friday night at Hollywood, a $522k carryover drew another $1.75 million in fresh wagers. The parlay going into the last leg was only $8,871, and the race was won by Suances de Espana, the 7-2 second choice. With a carryover and only one actual winning favorite, a $100k payoff for a $40k parlay would have seemed more than square. So how did the pick-6 pay $498,711.20 to only three winners?

There were 55 live combos going into the finale, a maiden-claimer with six first-time starters in a field of 10. Of those 55, 18 were alive to the obvious-on-paper hot firster, Cactus Flyer, a bullet-working Jeff Mullins trainee who would go off the 8-5 favorite at post time. That pick-6 was posted as paying $83,118.40. Another 15 tickets (paying $99,742.80 each) were alive to second-time starter Kay S, who would go off the 3.80-1 third choice, just behind firster Suances de Espana. So even though the winner was a slightly lower price (at 3.50-1) than Kay S., there were 15 live tickets to Kay S. and only three to Suances de Espana.

As for Cactus Flyer, had he won the pick-6 would have paid even less than the posted $83k will-pay, because there was a late scratch in the race of Tribal Fire, to whom there had been 9 live tickets -- all of which were then transferred to Cactus Flyer. So in effect, this was a race with two well-bet firsters, but there were 27 (18+9) tickets alive to one and only 3 to the other. I can only imagine how thrilled people who might have been alive to both Cactus Flyer and Tribal Fire were to end up being alive to Cactus Flyer twice instead of picking up the obvious alternative, the bet-down Suances de Espana. Of course if this had been carded as the first rather than last leg of the sequence, bettors could have seen the action on the winner and included him instead of guessing in the dark.

On Saturday at Belmont, the G2 New York Stakes was switched from grass to dirt in the middle of the afternoon, before the start of the Pick-6, but a decision that could and should have been made earlier in the day. Perhaps the announcement was made early and loudly on the NYRA signal, but I'm forced to watch the races on TVG while the signal remains blacked out in Nassau County, and their commentators were still discussing and putting up their pick-4 tickets as if the New York were still on the grass well after the pick-6 had started. (The ongoing confusion may have contributed to the first big miss in Belmont's guaranteed $350k Saturday pick-4's -- only $257,050 was wagered.)

In any case, the victory by Icon Project (fourth choice of five) in the off-the-grass New York killed all tickets even before 28-1 One Lucky Date took the finale, so there was a $38k carryover into Sunday's card. Most tickets probably singled Cocoa Beach, who was 1-9 on the board (actually 0.15-1 in the mutuels) making her season debut in the for the four-horse Floral Park Heatherten Stakes. Cocoa Beach won the G1 Beldame over Ginger Punch in the Belmont slop last September, but didn't seem to care for today's Belmont slop and neglected to beat any of her three opponents, setting up boxcar place payoffs:

1 - With Flying Colors  $13.20  $25.20  ---

2 - Nicksappealinglady    ---      $33.80  ---

Here were the pools that led to those payoffs:

Cocoa Beach's defeat left only seven tickets alive -- three of them to 8-5 favorite Afrikaner, paying $51k each, and a single ticket to each of four other horses at $154k each -- but those four did not include 9-2 third choice Client Eight, a four-length winner.

So you can get to work on a $154,891 double-carry into Wednesday -- or maybe not until Wednesday morning: Four of the six races in the sequence are, you guessed it, scheduled for the grass. It's been raining all day (and all month) here, and the current forecast is for Monday showers, Tuesday showers and Wednesday thundershowers.

Posted by Steven Crist on Jun 21, 2009 at 7:42:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (41)

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June 19, 2009

From 7.9 to 4.4

After writing the Sunday column about Wesley Ward's triumphs at Ascot and the state of 2-year-old racing here and abroad, I got curious about how many starts our 2-year-old champions are making these days as compared to the recent past. And constant readers know what happens when I get curious about this kind of stuff: I somewhat compulsively open up Champions and The American Racing Manual and start making a color-coded chart.

Here, then, are the number of starts, month by month, made by the 36 2-year-old champion colts or geldings since 1973. At the bottom is a total for each of the four nine-year periods during that span:

The key finding is in the highlighted green section: The champion 2-year-olds from 1973 through 1981 made an average of 7.9 starts as juveniles, while those from 2000 through 2008 made an average of 4.4 starts. And if you remove Seattle Slew's unusual three-start campaign, and Johannesburg's European one, the gap increases to 8.5 vs. 4.1.

Posted by Steven Crist on Jun 19, 2009 at 8:52:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

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June 18, 2009

Relentless Rain

More than 60 grass races have been washed onto the main track in just over eight weeks of racing at Belmont amid the one of the rainiest springs in Long Island annals, and it may not to get better any time soon. Saturday's G2 New York for older turf fillies could be the only race that stays on the grass in the next week (Friday's races have already been taken off), and seems sure to be run under boggy conditions. Tomorrow's supposed to be drier, but here's the long-range forecast from weather.com:

Thursday 6/18: Rain

Friday 6/19 Cloudy

Saturday 6/20: Thundershowers

Sunday 6/21: Showers

Monday 6/22: Showers

Tuesday 6/23: Scattered Showers

Wednesday 6/24: Thunderstorms

Thursday 6/25: Isloated Thunderstorms

Friday 6/26: Scattered Thunderstorms

In the meantime, it's been tough to play Belmont lately (even if the signal hadn't been cut off to Nassau County residents, the topic of the Saturday column -- feel free to comment on it here)  between the short fields and sometimes unpredictable decisions regarding which races have been taken off the grass.

One exceptional performance, however, came on Wednesday's relatively dry (technically "good") main track when Rollers won a N2x allowance by seven lengths with six furlongs in 1:08.18, good for a Beyer Speed Figure of 107. Rollers won the $250k Gallant Bob last year and was second to Ikigai in the G3 Mr. Prospector this winter. The 4-year-old Stormy Atlantic colt, a New York-bred, races for Lael Stables and is trained by Barclay Tagg.

--Here's Yeats winning his fourth straight Ascot Gold Cup earlier today:

Posted by Steven Crist on Jun 18, 2009 at 6:45:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (32)

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June 14, 2009

Rough Weekend for Stars

The four recent Eclipse Award finalists who raced this weekend all lost as heavy favorites, with three of them finishing 4th or worse.

Music Note: Last year's Mother Goose, CCA Oaks and Gazelle winner, and third to Proud Spell and Eight Belles in the voting for the 3-year-old filly championship, ran fifth in the G1 Ogden Phipps at Belmont Saturday as part of a three-ply entry favored at 7-to-20. Music Note, held out of the Shuvee last month after training poorly, made a brief surge into contention entering the stretch turn but had nothing in the tank after that and was beaten 10 3/4 lengths.

Einstein: A finalist for both the Older Male and Turf Male titles last year, Einstein was bidding for a third straight Grade 1 victory in Saturday's Stephen Foster at Churchill Downs, and also trying to become just the second horse (joining Lava Man) to win Grade 1's on dirt, grass and synth. Einstein ran third, beaten just a length and a nose, after a titanically bad trip that prompted this unusually long and dramatic official chart footnote: "Einstein bobbled at the start to get away a bit slow, checked off heels near the seven-eighths marker, was bottled up between horses down the backstretch and through the second turn, shifted out a bit and found a seam entering the stretch, was bumped and stuffed behind rivals with three-sixteenths to run, got through towards the inside late but was left with too much to do."

Kip DeVille: The 2007 Breeders' Cup Mile winner, and runner-up in that race last year, led to the top of the stretch but then faded badly and ran fourth of five as the 0.75-1 favorite in the G3 Poker at Belmont Sunday. The Belmont turf was soft -- the winning time was 1:36.50, as opposed to Kip DeVille's 1:32.94 winning last year's Poker -- but he's won on soft turf before, including the 2007 Breeders' Cup Mile, which was run in a boggy 1:39.78.

Indian Blessing: The champion female sprinter of 2008 and champion 2-year-old filly of 2007 was 1-2  in the Desert Stormer at Hollywood Park Sunday. She stalked Coco Belle early but was laboring by upper stretch and faded to finish fourth, beaten 5 1/2 lengths. Although Indian Blessing has run decently on synthetic tracks before, she clearly is a much better filly on real dirt, and trainer Bob Baffert said she's headed back to that surface and New York.

Kip Deville and Indian Blessing and Kip DeVille were making their first starts since racing on the Dubai World Cup card March 28, supplying further ammunition to those who believe American horses often fare poorly when returning from that taxing trip.

The Shuvee and Desert Stormer were both run as the fourth race on their cards, a ploy by track managements to increase the likelihood of a Pick-Six carryover by keeping races with apparent "cinches" out of the sequence. At least California can argue that it's exposing its stakes racing to eastern simulcast customers this way, but Belmont's running a Grade 1 stakes at 2:37 p.m. just seems a little tacky. It's also questionable whether it accomplished anything. Both the Phipps and the allowance race run in its place were won by the second choice, so there probably would have been a carryover either way, and the bet handled only $81,446 with the Phipps removed from the sequence. The late pick-4 missed its $350,000 guarantee by $12,364.

--A few other notes on the weekend's racing, which included nine graded stakes:

 

--Note above that the Fleur De Lis was slightly faster than the Stephen Foster, which was run half an hour later at the same distance. The first five Foster finishers were only 1 1/4 lengths apart. The older males are not exactly an imposing division this year.

--Obrigado will be the only horse to run in two American graded stakes at more than 12 furlongs this year: he finished third in the San Juan Capistrano April 19 and then won Saturday's Round Table, both 1 3/4-mile races. The Breeders' Cup Marathon has been lengthened to 1 3/4 miles this year but is not yet a graded stakes because this will be only its second edition.

--That's the same reason that Saturday's $200k Monmouth Stakes, invented last year to lure Big Brown, is not a graded race this year. This second edition, however, may have been the most stirring race of the weekend. Presious Passion did almost exactly what he did in the MacDiarmada two starts back, setting the pace, looking absolutely cooked at the top of the stretch, and then improbably rerallying at the rail to win a photo. No one's posted the Monmouth on YouTube yet, but here's that MacDiarmada in case you missed it the first time around:

I admit that my initial affection for Presious Passion began with his completing a Pick-4 at 67-1 in the McKnight two Decembers ago, but he has turned into one of my favorite horses since then for his genuine will to win.

Posted by Steven Crist on Jun 14, 2009 at 7:45:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (41)

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