Sunday Morning

My dog woke me up early and I figured I would do a blog post. If you disagree with anything I say and want to vent, please blame him.

I played the races yesterday for the first time in a little while in a semi-professional fashion. It's amazing how exciting this game is when you have your head into it. Quite the puzzle.

At Oaklawn, The Factor won the Rebel, proving to some folks he is a pretty talented horse that should be able to go longer. On the downside for him, the track was speed favoring. Considering the trouble and the track, Sway Away I thought was good. In addition, Blind Luck raced fairly well too, although her seemingly losing contact with the field was disconcerting.

After the race a few bucks popped up wanting to bet the Factor at 15-1 at betfair. Someone liked what they saw and thought that was a fair price.

It might be because I was busy and missed it (likely excuse), or that I am a terrible blog manager (likely truth) but I see I missed a comment on Friday.... from O_Crunk! And it was a fairly typical OC comment too - irreverent, interesting and with a point. It's on Friday's post.

Meirs Hanover romped in the Cam Fella. There was a reason they slid this final into the sixth race slot - solid chalk. It's usually one of the better races of the winter stakes season, but not this year.

Cal Nation's race at GP in the third would have been interesting on Betfair yesterday, trading in-running. The horse was 1-5 and he looked like an absolute monster, ready to run away from the field at the head of the lane. Then it appeared it started to hurt a little. The horse hung like a cheap suit. I am pretty sure he would have been 1.05 at Betfair with a furlong to go. Whomever would have capitalized on that is smarter than I.

Me too Jessica! "In the short eight years I’ve paid serious attention to racing, I can’t think of a time where the industry felt so adrift."

Woody Stephens (or maybe another throw-back old time trainer) once said that he needed a four months to work out the kinks in a horse to get him/her back racing well, or improving. With pain-killers and pre-race galore, nowadays that seems to take four minutes. With my pooch that I got from the pound I am happy to say Woody's philosophy does work. After about five months the little fella (with some sort of shoulder issue and torn ligaments in his back leg) is moving like a "tremendous machine". Well, maybe not that good. But he is running and doing some things he could not do five months ago. Feed, some R n r, some natural supplements and care seemed to do the trick so far. I wish trainers would do the same with their stock, instead of injecting and dropping them in class. Would we not have deeper fields and better racing if Woody was still King?

Canlumbo on the case - Why tracks competing is a good thing. Competing on take is certainly important, but we obviously need more than that to compete. News on Trackus, on-track changes like adding Wifi, exporting signals on the interweb etc is all looking up. Better late than never?

Last evening I checked twinky-ville and noticed they were telling me to follow Britney Spears. Why? I have no idea. I also have no idea how she has 8 million followers. It also asked me to follow Rachel Maddow, Howard Stern and Win Star Farms. Maybe they are telling me I am a left wing, foul-mouthed Aerosmith fan who in his spare time likes reading pedigrees?

Life's worth can be measured in many ways. I personally find that one way to do it, is to count how many times you have to write or say "thank you" to people who are offering their best wishes. People who live their life well use a lot of thank you's.