Off We Go on a Wednesday

One of the better horse racing writers on the web today gets virtually no publicity at all.

Dan over at Thorotrends works extremely hard on his blog posts and they are fun, informative, thought-provoking and interesting. Praise coming from a blog dude that writes his posts in about ten minutes may need to be taken with a grain of salt, but I think I'm right on this one. Take a look at his most recent post on television and racing, and see if you agree. His other excellent posts are below that one.

The RCI bans private vets from administering lasix on raceday. I guess it's a good rule, however to me it smacks a little bit like the city of Washington D.C. banning handguns. I'm not sure it's going to be followed by bad racing people, who are using more than lasix as a pre-race.

Alan's yearly "Naughty and Nice" list is up for harness racing in 2011. Who's on it? Find out here.

I was asked why I was not talking about the political machinations in Jersey this past couple of weeks. It's not because I don't care, or that I don't think it's important. I simply feel it will get worked out and spending time on it here is a waste of mine. In the end, Chris Christie will get what he wants.

I'm someone, like many of you, who like to start and then finish things. There has to be a beginning and an end for me to feel successful. It is why I truly admire people who work in horse rescue, mainly for their determination. There is no beginning and end to horse rescue; the horses just keep coming, and coming and coming. If you'd like to help one, there is an awesome Ebay auction going on with plenty of cool stuff.

There is so little harness racing news this time of year, but Pompano sent out a press release about their end of year meet. Big Bad John, Noble, food trucks! Don't tell them it's not exciting. Well done.

When Zenyatta was winning all those races in a row there was a ton of grumbling that she didn't come east and face boys month in and month out and that her winning streak beating up on her own on poly was somehow tainted. In addition, in some camps the winning streak meant nothing. That showed the inside baseball of our sport, and why we don't let bettors and columnists so close to the sport market it. As Rapid Redux is illustrating, the general public can relate to streaks, and they mean something to them. They don't care who he raced, or what races he's in. He was on Sportscenter last evening because of the streak, nothing more and nothing less, just like Queen Z was.

Have a good day folks!