California Beyers

[beyerguy]

SO TGJB,

What did you think of Mullins calling bettors addicts or idiots?

[Saddlecloth]

TGJB wrote:

> Rick Arthur is the guy in charge of testing in California. When
> they first came up with positives, he announced the names of
> two of the trainers (Mullins and Cerin), but not the third
> because, he said, that one had in effect given his word that it
> was a screw-up, and they weren\'t worried about him (turned out
> to be Canani) because \"We know who\'s been naughty and who\'s
> been nice\".
>
> Then last week he announced that they hadn\'t been able to test
> for milkshakes three days, but it had been an \"honest error\"--
> the vet who was doing it had needed some days off, and they
> didn\'t have a backup. Let me get this straight-- YOU DIDN\'T
> KNOW AFTER THE FIRST DAY YOU HAD A PROBLEM??
>
> In today\'s LA Times it now comes out that Arthur is a regular
> working vet who the track hired to do the job, rather than
> bring in one of their own. Meaning, he\'s the vet for SIX
> trainers he is policing, and potentially could be hired by any
> of the others.
>
> Delmar Deb might want to chime in with other stuff, but I\'m
> having a very hard time keeping my comments suitable for family
> viewing here.
>
>

I am glad I do this for fun is all I can say.  How long has mandella been using this vet?  Since they started the testing, could mandella be that sneaky?

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Thats what i get for skimming.

Unbelieveable, these folks in racing don\'t understand the slightest thing about appearance of propriety. We are going to have to dash their piggy bank on the rocks.

Rick Arthur...unbelieveable.

I\'ll rip off a letter to Santa Anita...this is crazy.

[Delmar Deb]

Ok, I\'ll chime in...now that I\'ve finished my rant over the state of racing out here via email and telephone for the past 3 hours!

Rick Arthur is a practicing vet in southern CA and includes Mandella and Headley among his clients.  HOWEVER, he has been both an advisor and technical consultant to the CHRB and racetracks for as long as I can remember.  Arthur was the one person that every faction of racing seemed to feel comfortable with in going to for an opinion, advice, etc. on medication related matters.  

The track is doing the testing from its own resources...remember, milkshakes are not illegal here and do not fall under the auspices of the CHRB yet.  Arthur is not a \"shill\" for the tracks, anymore than Ingrid Fermin is \"after\" Mullins.  If she had not included Mullins horses in the testing program, she would be ignoring every piece of information available to the public via Beyer and TG numbers, visual moves within a race of elongated acceleration and/or powerful spurts of energy that make you wonder what the horse had for breakfast!

Lastly, Mullins has been the most arrogant and \"in your face\" practitioner for the past couple of years.  When he comes out firing and reaches 40% or more winners, he keeps throwing them at you almost daring you to find anything.  Then when they start searching the barns, he falls to something akin to where he is at today (2 for 37 or something like that?).

Last year on SA Derby Day, however, when he was in another seach and fall slump, he lit up the board in almost every race he entered with horses (prior to Castledale) winning off by lengths and looking like Man o War in the process.  His main client (Bob Bone) had the only winning ticket in a $1 million plus Pick Six at Del Mar last summer - where any inside knowlege of the condition and/or treatment of the Mullins horses in the last 2 races would have proved most beneficial!  Maybe Mullins really means that the $2 bettors are idiots and addicts...and the ones who bet a lot more and have \"inside\" information are OK?

Lest you accuse me of looking for excuses, I will be the first to tell you that inside information on medication is out there for anyone to see - look at the horse, look at the stable, look at the trainer stats and you can figure most of it out yourself.  Dale Romans hasn\'t had a winner at GP in a month - he was quoted in an interview 2 weeks ago when he brought down Roses in May for a workout at GP that his barn at Palm Meadows was sick...so he was keeping Roses at GP until Dubai.  I stopped playing Romans\' horses until they win again.

The race track media out here will do anything to cash a bet.  And with a couple of notable exceptions (Jeff Siegel and Bruno de Julio), the morning airwaves were full of excuses for Mullins...ranging from \'the reporter made him say that\' to \'Jeff is under a lot of pressure these days\'!  

What happened to accountability and responsibility.  Pointing the finger at someone else doesn\'t make you clean - but that\'s what he\'s doing...maybe Karl Rove is running his campaign?

In any event, with Magna\'s servers crashing during the heart of the Gulfstream card and SA and off-site betting facilities refusing to hire sufficient tellers, etc. for the record crowds - the $2 bettors won\'t need Mullins advice to stay away...seems that the very ones who put the sport on for public consumption are trumping even the medication controversy in the public\'s mind.

And for this I worked 35 years to retire and go to the races everyday???

Kev,

I was giving St. Liam close to 50% of the race and I made RHT second most likely among a group of very similar horses (no real edge for second best). Unless you had a strong reason to not like St Liam, it was tough to find value here. Since I thought it was St Liam\'s race to lose, I didn\'t bet. However, I thought RHT was pretty likely to improve.

[SoCalMan2]

>Fair enough. On 1/29, the horse you liked came second behind the favorite for a short exacta.<

Maybe this is sarcasm and I am just missing it, or maybe I am remembering incorrectly, BUT wasn\'t 1/29 the Sunshine Classic?  The exacta was not \"short\" and it was not a \"favorite\" who won.  The winner was 70-1.  Fair enough that the ROTW did not select the 70-1 winner to use, but, if you backwheeled their value horses (to back up win wagers), you would have hit a nice exacta.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

I think its an interesting time for making and winning wagers. Theres a lot going on. I\'ve cut back right now and am picking spots. Part because of whats going on with the drug issue, part because of unfamiliarity with surfaces. Part because I\'ve been a bit cold. Its careful time right now. Additionally, theres been few horses to really latch onto. DeClan\'s moon has provided a couple exotic chances. (The one with Giacomo). I got lucky strictly on an odds decision with Foggy. (Still didn\'t pay much...unfortunately I dismissed More Smoke other than pace). That Big Cap was there if you had the inside California information. Knowing Saturday, what I know today I might of cashed the Big Cap. I would have put them all in fourth. I thought a negative 1, perhaps even a zero could win that race and I did not sufficiently factor Mandella on his home track with his home vets.  I just had a block about accepting 7-2 on RHT in that spot. In hindsight I think I\'d of dumped Supah (Easy to say he finished last) and swapped him for RHT. Mandella\'s vet is the Milkshake Vet. Does that bother anyone else?

CtC

[kev]

In the ROTW it said. \" he showed alot of promise at early 3, but hasn\'t developed since\"  I think he just did in that last race running a 0, I\'m sorry I though horses like that was horses that were ready to do some major running. Guess I will have to buy some TG sheets for this weekend and show people how it\'s done. hee hee.  not knocking TG for the job that did in the ROTW.

I thought the RHT had almost no chance to develop at 3 and that\'s what some people were missing. He came out running and was immediately thrown to the wolves, where he was running quite well. IMHO, running 1s against the best 3yo horses in the country is a lot better than running 2s against limited allowance horses.  

The Belmont is the most obvious throw out race you are ever going to find. It was 12F and he engaged a vastly superior horse in a duel in fast fractions.

The Monmouth race was also an obvious throwout. The performace was too dreadful to be taken seriously and they immediately stopped on him. So it\'s fairly obvious something was wrong.

He came back fine at 4. If people were looking for a huge new peak at 7F that\'s just silly. That was obviously just a prep (albiet a valuable one). His next race was better and this was obviously the main event.

IMO, based on his 3YO figures in the spring and status as a lightly raced horse that got interrupted last year, he was very likely to improve here.

That\'s different than saying he figured to improve enough to beat St. Liam if that one fired his best shot.