Catching Up...
First off, the King’s Bishop & Travers were really exciting races! I was so happy to see Hard Spun finally get his G1 (even if the design of the plan was to get him black type for his stallion career).
I thought, as most, that Street Sense would put that field away with a little more ease, but what a stretch battle! I was suprised to see him rate and am looking forward to reading various thoughts on that. It was kind of cute how he was looking at the crowd right after crossing the finish. I was still alive in the Pick 4 after the Travers but like an idiot didn’t include La Traviata. Clearly there was something wrong with me, humidity? More like something that kind of rhymes with it that starts with S.
A few things have caught my eye while I’ve been on my blogging hiatus. A DRF + paid subscription article entitled One Racing Official with a Backbone got me thinking about the need for a Racing Commissioner (the original article has expired but Superfecta has a good post about it).
The official featured in the article is Joe Gorajec, the “veteran executive director of the Indiana Racing Commission” according to the column.
[quote]
A federal judge in Indianapolis, ruling in a case in which a well-known trainer and his wealthy principal owners challenged Gorajec’s refusal to license the trainer because of his past record, made it clear that Gorajec acted clearly within his authority.
Then Gorajec sidelined the leading harness driver at both of Indiana’s tracks, Hoosier Park and Indiana Downs, for two years for abusive and excessive whipping.
[end quote]
The column goes on to detail how the powerful trainer, who was suspended in a number of other states, didn’t show up and apply for the license until the day of the race but Gorajec refused the license. It also gives details of the over whipping case and rightfully refers to overwhipping as “the silent, unspoken scourge of American racing”.
Speaking of whips, the Baze breakdown incident [DRF] made me a little nauseous. England is much more strict when it comes to whipping, superstar jock Frankie Dettori was recently suspended for his use of the whip during the Royal Ascot. Can you imagine a star jockey getting suspended here? I thought Calvin Borel really beat the crap out of Lady Joanne in the Alabama. Another one that comes to mind was Mike Smith’s ride on Tiago in the Santa Anita Derby, watch that stretch run again and tell me you think that’s ok. Not only are these incidences not ever addressed, they’re not even mentioned!
There were also a couple of blog posts that caught my eye, Down the Stretch, a new addition to the TBA had a interesting post on slaughter houses and the root of the problem, over breeding. I agree with her on that! Foolish Pleasure had a nice one on breeding issues discussing the lack of stamina in American breeding and drawing a correlation to American’s gnat-like attention span, I also agree here.
And one last item of interest, Steve Crist had a great column on the Hennegan brothers documentary The First Saturday in May that I recently mentioned in this post. Coincidence? Probably.
And finally, I’ve been working on getting this blog into WordPress and it’s going well. Shouldn’t be too long before I have a relaunch which will include comments, tags, a real functioning search and an easily searchable archive!
