It's Easy Being Green

It's St. Patrick's Day, one of my favorite holiday's. Saint Patrick was a dude who lived a long time ago, and interestingly died on March 17th, rather than was born on March 17th. Those are about all the facts I know about Saint Patrick, without consulting Wikipedia.

Let's get to today's St. Patrick's Day edition of this silly blog.

Green Horses

Back in the late 80's, as a first-year student (read: idiot punk who went out and drank beer too much), the family stable's trainer zipped to New York for a mixed sale. We were a small stable, so while some really nice horses were going through the ring, we focused on cheaper ones. One of the hip numbers came out that we liked. He was a son of Most Happy Fella out of an Albatross mare, Firbolgs.

His name? Happy Irishman. I think of Happy on St. Patrick's Day every year it seems. He ended up not being too good for us, but he did win a couple of races. Incidentally, a year or two later his brother was born and he was a really nice colt (Right Hand Man). We had the right pedigree.

Green Purses, Red Handles

Standardbred Canada has started to list both the nightly handle and the nightly purses on their results list. Some of the numbers are nothing short of maddening.Green light on purses, red light on handles. Racing in Ontario should start a fund with 5% of slot cash going to marketing and player rewards or something. I know, I know, I kid.

Green Light Betting Decisions

Thorotrends recent survey is a good one. He asked several questions of all different types of bettors. One of which was the importance of certain factors to each subset.

As we see as plain as day, the larger the bettor the more importance he/she places on takeout rate. For those who cling to purse size as a major factor, for about the 1000th time, it scores low on the list. Give us a full field of competitive 8 claimers, sans supertrainer at 2-5 and with a takeout rate which doesn't require us to give our first born and four pints of blood, we'll bet.

Old Sod & Green Wood

I am going to miss it tonight, but the Old Sod crowd should be in full-force. The pub, located in the Royal York area on Bloor Street West has been around for an eon and St. Paddy's Day is a big day.

I used to frequent the pub, often times after the track. There were a few track bums in there.

For those who patronized old Greenwood Raceway it was certainly no Orchard Park or the Mecca, but not too bad for a West end joint.

Have a happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!