Not By a Long Shot--Not a Bad Read

[richiebee]

Just finished \"Not By a Long Shot\", a recently published non fiction piece
centered around New England racing in general and focusing on the 2000 racing
season at Suffolk Downs.

Author TD Thornton was Director of Media Relations for Suffolk at the time.

I particularly enjoyed Thornton\'s retelling of the saga of Anthony P. \"Fat
Tony\" Ciulla, who was fixing races up and down the east coast in the 1970s.
If you have access to back issues of Sports Illustrated, the SI article
published in November of 1978 \"Confessions of a Master Race Fixer\"
is a great piece of journalism which reported on a very dark side of racing,
and called into question the honesty of some of the higher profile riders on
the New York circuit at the time.

Thornton reports in \"Not By a Long Shot\" that in 1974 Mike Hole turned down
offers of $5,000 and $10,000 to \"hold\" a horse at Saratoga; Hole was found dead
in his car 18 months later in what was conveniently labeled a suicide.

In discussing how on the racetrack things are not always as they seem, Thornton
quotes JFK: \"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-- deliberate,
contrived and dishonest, but the myth-- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.\"

[stillinger]

richiebee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just finished \"Not By a Long Shot\", a recently
> published non fiction piece
> centered around New England racing in general and
> focusing on the 2000 racing
> season at Suffolk Downs.
>
> Author TD Thornton was Director of Media Relations
> for Suffolk at the time.
>
> I particularly enjoyed Thornton\'s retelling of the
> saga of Anthony P. \"Fat
> Tony\" Ciulla, who was fixing races up and down the
> east coast in the 1970s.
> If you have access to back issues of Sports
> Illustrated, the SI article
> published in November of 1978 \"Confessions of a
> Master Race Fixer\"
> is a great piece of journalism which reported on a
> very dark side of racing,
> and called into question the honesty of some of
> the higher profile riders on
> the New York circuit at the time.
>
> Thornton reports in \"Not By a Long Shot\" that in
> 1974 Mike Hole turned down
> offers of $5,000 and $10,000 to \"hold\" a horse at
> Saratoga; Hole was found dead
> in his car 18 months later in what was
> conveniently labeled a suicide.
>
> In discussing how on the racetrack things are not
> always as they seem, Thornton
> quotes JFK: \"The great enemy of truth is very
> often not the lie-- deliberate,
> contrived and dishonest, but the myth--
> persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.\"

I see you decided we needed cheering up. What the track compares favorably to in my opinion is most corporations, governments, religionists, etc. I will get the read, though. And it was some of my favorite riders. I have an old story about harness racing that illustrates human or at least my nature. One time at SPT park in the summer of 64, I threw down my program in disgust and swore off the stupid, dishonest basturds! Even went to my mom\'s and declared, never again a harness race. The next summer, \'65, a guy named Eddie, who trained a mare named Glad Rags, gave my friend, Bobby Haddad, 8 horses that summer. 7 of them won, and one that was 8/1 ran second a neck. One of them was a 5/1 debut that turned out to be the ILL harness horse of the year. I loved harness racing that year. There\'s a little Enron in a lot of us. That\'s why we live longer now, to get rid of it before we check out.

[Boscar Obarra]

Problem the trots have is , it\'s harder to stiff em and make it look good. At least  it was in the old days. 2 obvious, even to the blind and half drunk harness fans.

 Thorntons book is a good read.