Thursday's Here

There's plenty of talk about the race day med ban this morning.....

Sid Fernando has a piece up on sires siring bleeders. It is a topic I am very interested in, and I bet a lot of you are too. In harness, not long ago, trainer Brett Pelling spoke off the cuff about our breed and had some not too nice things to say. In a nutshell he profiled some of our top stallions as passing on some of their poor traits, like bad sesamoids, breathing problems and bleeding. I won't mention who those sires were (he did not mention any names, and since it is anecdotal I will not share my opinion, either), but he seemed to strongly believe it was more than myth. What do you think?

HANA was called by Jim Gagliano of the Jockey Club for a chat on their stance on race day meds. HANA ran a survey and published it this morning. Some of the comments were fascinating. I hasten to say there might be a bit of a bias showing in the debate, however. Horseplayers have been so annoyed about illegal designer drugs that some might support any ban at all, on anything. I think there is a spillover effect, and lasix is a whipping boy.

John Campbell will be driving tonight after his major injury. Good for John.

A horse who does not get much respect, but seems to keep cashing checks is Custard the Dragon. He drew the rail on Saturday in the Adios.

VFTRG looks at Christie's anti-racing stance in Jersey.  You know my view: If a politician is ROI driven, and works with numbers and makes decisions as such, racing will always be a loser. We simply do not generate ROI, and there is not enough government capital (or skin in the game) to put it on some sort of pedestal like casino gaming, or Atlantic City.

What were the odds on Frankel here in North America? I swore I saw a 4-5 close at Twinspires. He was 1.60 at Betfair.

As noted yesterday, See You At Peelers goes tonight, and appears impossible to beat. What I think is the best two year old to come around since Somebeachsomewhere, Mel Mara, goes Saturday at the Meadowlands.

Have a nice day everyone.