Been mad busy lately, thank God people are still suing each other at the drop of a hat
and producing mounds of paperwork....
Went to Belmont live last Sat and it was great to buy a program and not see Hayward\'s
name on the masthead.
Lots of fun in today\'s DRF: specifically the piece about the Canadian slaughterhouse
which will no longer accept thoroughbreds, Hovdey\'s piece on the knee jerk NY reaction
of instituting a Belmont stakes only detention barn regimen.
Having spent seven years in and out of racetrack dorm rooms, I must say my favorite
article involved Calder (a CD subsidiary) announcing that it was going to begin
charging $5 per day for backstretch workers to stay in dorm rooms. One commenter
succinctly noted that given the small size of Calder dorm rooms, when measured by the
square foot, these squalid quarters would become among the most expensive residential
rental real estate in the surrounding area.
Not commented on in these parts, but discussed in the NY Post and DRF, the Belmont
favorite being stripped of his nasal strip.
Great article in the NY Post discussing the fact that O\'Neill has not worked IHA
since the Preakness, and that apparently he will not have a significant work between
Preakness and Belmont. The Post article listed Secretariat\'s works during his Triple
Crown campaign. To understate, they were rather impressive. I do not want to enter
the argument if racehorses are faster now than then, and I am too young to have seen
Dr. Fager, but I do not know if any horse was, is or will be as fast as Secretariat
was during his Triple Crown races.
Wonderful quote by O\'Neill after the Derby win: If a colt with IHA\'s PPs and #s had
been trained by Pletcher and ridden by Johhny V, he would have been no more than 5/1
at post time for the Derby. True.
Crowd for the Belmont: How much will it be promoted in the next week? Who will be
responsible for promoting it? I think 120,00 saw Smarty get denied in 2004; in 2008,
between 80,000 - 90,000 saw Big Brown come acropper. After the race we heard that
there were death threats on the colt, the jockey, the trainer and the owners as
Tricky and the IEAH braintrust injected some WWF into the Triple Crown.
Chaos. Sarava. Da Tara. Birdstone. Commendable. Pletcher getting his first Triple
Crown winner with a filly.
IHA, the contender, likely 4/5. UR, second fave, still hasn\'t lived up to his
potential. Dullahan, bit of a wise guy horse, never won on dirt but going out for a
trainer who seems to be pressing all the right buttons. And then the agents of Chaos.
And thinking back to some of the Belmonts I attended live: Avatar, Affirmed, Colonial
Affair. And thinking ahead to how much of a bribe I am going have to give my wife and
mother in law to leave Living Room Downs for a few hours next Saturday.
A little more than seven days (and less than 2 months till the Spaaah). Sitting here
in a windowless room high above Manhattan, I can smell the ammonia like odor from the
urine soaked straw, the Bigel oil, the hundreds of gallons of spilled beer on the
frontside, the stairwells at Belmont that smell like a sidewalk in Kingston,
Jamaica;as General George S Patton said about war (at least George C Scott
said it in the movie) \"God help me, I do love it so.\"
Just 80,000-90,000 for Big Brown but remember it was a scorcher in the upper 90\'s that day with humidity. It\'s suppose to be beautiful Saturday (low 70s). Could be a Smarty-sized crowd.
Sek beat me to it. Was half-planning to go to Big Brown, but the weather was deathly, and delighted I finessed that. With no local city OTBs working this time around, and the hype about the kid jock, and less-than-humid weather with temps below 80, they could kill it.
Topcat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sek beat me to it. Was half-planning to go to
> Big Brown, but the weather was deathly, and
> delighted I finessed that. With no local city
> OTBs working this time around, and the hype about
> the kid jock, and less-than-humid weather with
> temps below 80, they could kill it.
Agree with this...was at the Big Brown one after buying tix from someone on this board..It was terrible out there and I wished I was in the AC in an OTB instead..
This will be serious with no NYC OTBs and all the hype..I have not seen much marketing out here in NY though..
on a sidenote I went to the Aqu casino last night for the first time..I wish those guys ran the racterack. It is a place that you would want to go hangout. Beautifully done, especially remembering what it looked like before when it was an NYRA property. Was the track ever a nice place to hag out or have we always been treated to loads of pidgeon crap everywhere and nasty tellers?
\"on a sidenote I went to the Aqu casino last night for the first time..I wish those guys ran the racterack. It is a place that you would want to go hangout. Beautifully done, especially remembering what it looked like before when it was an NYRA property. Was the track ever a nice place to hag out or have we always been treated to loads of pidgeon crap everywhere and nasty tellers?
Lost,
Thats because Genting has high level execs with the necessary wherewithal to run a gambling business, NYRA does not, never has.
Mike