Monday, March 31, 2008

Weekend Happenings

Busy weekend out there! The weather is getting warmer; and so is the racing. Here are a few notes and random thoughts.

First up, Paul MacDonnell rolled out to Truro, Nova Scotia and trained Somebeachsomewhere in 2:05. He reports that the horse looks good, seems sound, and is ready to get things rolling. I am very, very excited to see him. We should be able to tell pretty quickly if his year will be one for the ages.

In thoroughbred action, how about Curlin? Not only does he win the world’s richest race, he absolutely cruises. The next time we hear an owner speak about retiring a horse early, we should all send them to this youtube video. I love watching great horses, I don’t care if they are standardbreds or thoroughbreds.

Big Brown is another we spoke about below. I loved his poise and attitude in shrugging off challengers in the Florida Derby like they were 10 claimers. Is he another Derby horse? He sure looks like it.

In other news, the Standardbred Wagering Conference is scheduled for this month. Standardbred Canada has been pushing it, as they should. If work can get put on hold, I would really like to go this year to see what the whole she-bang is about. Is it going to be a bunch of people sitting around telling each other that they can’t do things, or will there be talk of actually doing something? I sure hope it is the latter. Here is the schedule of events for the conference.

Bob Marks let’s his thoughts be known about listening to customers at this conference.
This part made me chuckle was his note below, as it is like a dad telling his son who never listens, to actually listen. The bizarre thing, is that he is telling a 130 year old business something they should have done for, oh, about 130 years.

Since the purpose is to ascertain just why and where the handle has gone, it is advisable to encourage any players in attendance to testify with total candor. Or don’t even bother. We may or may not be able to specifically address all the dialogue expressed but at least we’ll have some idea where we stand in the grandstand.

Of course there will be a tendency to dismiss much of the banter as mere rhetoric from disgruntled and/or degenerate gamblers. But that would be like the prevailing ostriches pompously dismissing colloquialisms as not credible when offered by acknowledged racketeers in a mob trial.


I find that funny, and very accurate: “Degenerate gamblers”. Calling a few people I know that, who bet millions with the precision of a doctor doing open heart surgery on the Queen, is like calling Tiger Woods a weekend hacker.

Last up, Darryl Kaplan has a nice little opinion piece on being a horse racing customer. Give it a read, you’ll enjoy it, because I know you are all that: customers. You’ll especially enjoy it if you are a Toronto Maple Leaf fan.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I find it hard to be optimistic that anything will come of this Wagering Conference given the delegate structure and the fees they are charging. I certainly can't see the avergae joe attending and having a say. So does this just become another platform for the status quo of opinion? (anything other than us is evil, we must make anything other than us illegal, we just can't reduce takout or the business will fold, and wagering should be taxable so we can get gov't in our corner). I know it is a sour outlook but optimism is hard get to the surface when it is constantly pounded into the ground by the archaic thinking lot running the biz, who will no doubt be represented in spades at this show to protect their slice.

I guess we'll see what happens, maybe there is a ray of hope we can latch on to with any luck. It will be interesting to see after the fact who the "informed" delegates were.

PS like the new graphics but that picture on the bottom of Queen D needs to come back (i.e. Ready to read the blog)!

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