Monday Happenings

What do Rachel Alexandra and See You At Peelers have in common? Many things, but the bulk of it is they are both animals, and animals can't speak.

For a lot of people, the beginning of the end for Rachel was in her first start as a 4YO, where she was, well, not Rachel. Despite some flashes of speed from there on out, the connections didn't want to cheapen her any longer, and she was retired.

See You At Peelers' beginning of the end happened at the Meadows last year. There were excuses, people blamed the driver, the track, the trip, whatever they could. But no matter what, most cappers knew that horses like her don't come home in 30 seconds, unless something is wrong.

Takter never found out what was wrong, and despite a few good miles this year, she was retired after two terrible efforts.

Those two fillies could not tell their trainers what was wrong,  and rather than keeping on looking, the connections did right by the horses.

They were two awesomely brilliant animals. 

This is one of the reasons why I, as a player and fan, hold horses like Somebeachsomewhere, Cam Fella, and Zenyatta to such high esteem. Week in week out, slugging it out and fighting, sometimes over several seasons, and they were still standing. Horses like that amaze me in so many ways, and I consider myself lucky to have seen them.

Peelers is bred to Somebeachsomewhere. If genetics truly worked in the real world like on paper, that colt or filly will likely be able to go as fast as a thoroughbred for a piece. If there are a handful of horses in harness racing history with as high a cruising speed as those two, I think you have a small hand.

More notes:

The New York Times took another shot at racing in an editorial yesterday. Insiders disliked it, mainly because they brought up Doug's TCO2 violation, and used the crux of the CHRB guy saying he didn't milkshake the horse as some sort of exculpatory evidence. That's weird, if you ask me. If some Tour de France guy got caught with a banned performance enhancer, but they found he didn't inject it, but he probably ate it, it wouldn't matter. It's a fallacious argument.

What I have trouble with, with the PETA folks and the Times folks, is counting all his class IV's as "drugging". That is misinformation, in my opinion. Most of those things were overages of things that are barely penalized. I am not excusing him - overages are a sign of bad stable management and are not nothing - but they sure ain't as bad as the Times alludes either.

Scott Ferguson (from the UK) looks at the decision made by horsemen regarding Betfair in California.

• This was always coming in the States - the structure of stakeholders in American racing is considerably different to those they have faced previously in Britain and Australia. Everyone gets a say and there's no controlling body (government or administrator) who can push things through without approval at all levels. The horsemen's groups, in case the TOC, are as stubborn as they come. Racing in the US is dying big time, and yet anything which has a chance of moving the game forward has to jump through an incredible number of hurdles.

He's quite right. Can you imagine running a business where you make furniture, and to make a deal to sell it on furniture.com you have to ask for approval from the guys cutting the trees down?

Have a great Monday everyone.

Music, Books, ADW's & Some Solid Racing

The WSJ had a nice piece from the dude who created Listen.com, about what books have done right, and what music did wrong; post 1998. I know everyone remembered that music - used to selling overpriced CD's for $20 - really had a tough time with new technology, and went to great lengths to stop it. It's so fascinating to look back now and see that if those lawsuits succeeded, the iPod likely would've never been invented. Subsequently, it's not a stretch to surmise that without an iPod, an iPhone would not have followed either. Trying to protect slices, tends to ensure that new slices are not created.

We've talked about it a ton of times over the last five years on the blog, so no need to re-hash it, but our ADW rules and the way we've put our product on the web (high prices, and low accessibility) has simply been a game of catch up. What's worse about the whole episode, is that we had a monopoly in the darn thing. How could we screw up a monopoly? Lord knows.

Anyway, I found the article good, so I pass along the link.

Last evening we had a taste of what's in store in harness racing for 2012. Our preps - long after the three year old preps for the Derby - always tend to separate horses, and sometimes add more questions than answers. They also prove that April qualifiers should never be a harbinger that we need to worry about in June.

A Rock n Roll Dance got beat last night, and looked to be off somewhere - whether it be sickness or just not having a good day. The field was super-close to him, and although a really nice horse won, he looks to be better than that. I am not striking him off the list off one sub-par effort. Simply Business, in the same race, continues to look one-paced, after a nice run at two.

At Mohawk, the very fast Thinking Out Loud was beaten, and again it did not look like he fired a bullet. On the far turn, where he should've had tons, he looked to be slipping a little on the soupy track. Bob McIntosh confirmed as much on twitter. Count him out at your own risk.

Easy Again, after being beaten in his last, broke. He's not going into the elims with as much confidence as a few weeks ago.

Blot the Duer lost off fairly easy fractions at Yonkers in the Rooney. Pet Rock looks fine, and Hurrikane King Cole looked like he wanted to run several times.

Of course, Warrawee Needy is off sick, since his 149.2 Q a few weeks ago.

This is a fascinating time of the year. Who you do you like besides Sweet Lou, who hasn't seemed to do much wrong? It might be a different horse tomorrow. It's the way it is in harness racing with a potential deep crop.

Enjoy your Sunday everyone.

Respect

Racing seems to have a lot of respect for each other - to the point where if one faction yells loud enough, the other will choose the status-quo instead of moving forward with something - but when it comes to having respect for customers, that's a whole other story.

In California - where else? - the status quo rules on exchange wagering. The horsemen group figures it's best to call a pass. Bettors want it, the world wants it, marketing people at tracks want it, tracks themselves want it; everyone who is responsible for, or is, a customer wants it. But it's not done because an alphabet of horsemen say so.

On the same side of this ledger, last evening at Mohawk, a 4-5 shot in the 11th race was not given a fair effort - this a long-running complaint from customers everywhere. If you have a chalk, you have to try, or you should qualify the horse, or set back the connections in some way for doing it. It's been happening forever in harness racing, and no one does anything about it for the customer.

Exchange wagering, new bets, lower takeout, fixed odds to combat crazy late odds drops, and proper rules to ensure a bettors' hard earned money is respected are all given a back seat to what industry infighting wants.

If the customers of horse racing to groups like the TOC are considered horsemen, owners, or grooms; that's more than fine, go to it. But for the love of God, don't blame anyone but yourselves when you have fewer and fewer paying customers after continually ignoring their wishes.