Tuesday Notes

Woodbine decides to try and keep a good thing rolling. After a modern day handle bump Saturday, with $116k bet into the $100k guaranteed pick 4, they have decided to continue it. Another interesting thing - it was first spoken about, and de-facto released, on Facebook.

In other news, is harness racing beginning to kick some butt by doing something crazy: Getting together and promoting. The strategic pick 4's this past weekend all rolled. The pick 4, since the Meadowlands blazed the trail for everyone with a 15% takeout (when low rake was not kosher in this business), has become harness racings bet. It's nice to see tracks using that branding power.

Flipping horses for profit? Without commenting on Paulick's assertions (which I know nothing about), this is in general as common in places in our business as getting a morning cup of coffee, unfortunately. It's very hard to attract good, honest, decent people to invest in our business when some practices that others find abhorrent, are tolerated. I cut my teeth as a kid in racing with an honest harness trainer. At a sale once, I got a lesson about selling horses and doing it the right way from him, and my family. I could not believe that my trainer would give out so much information about a horse we were selling - including the bad points. "That's the way you do business if you want to be respected" I was told. It was a good life lesson for an idiot kid. That trainer? Below.

National Wagering numbers are down again. Some tracks - Gulfstream, Tampa Bay, and it seems Woodbine, are up. The largest handle joint in NA is down.Why is GP up? Because they make some common-sense decisions.

When does a Beyer mean nothing? When you horse's name starts with a Z, or if you have a talented three year old in April who is a deep closer trained by Nick Zito.

Will the Wood Memorial winner make it through safely to Derby Day? We'll find out soon. It's this weekend and apparently they are expecting rain.

Seth at Equidaily goes all out on promoting St Elmo Hero, even bringing in a picture of the dude from Hot Shots.

The trainer of ours? Tom Strauss. Sadly, Tom left the business of training several years ago because "he could not compete". When good people who care about horses like that can't compete it's not a loss for the individual, it's a loss for horse racing.