DQ'd From Awards

For those that do not know, horses owned by Bulletproof Enterprises have been disqualified from receiving their year end O'Brien Awards tonight.

Jackson Wittup, Chair of Standardbred Canada announced, “After reviewing the suspension ruling from the ORC along with the O’Brien eligibility policy, the committee has determined that the O’Brien award for the three-year-old pacing filly category will not be awarded on Saturday night.

“In the three-year-old pacing colt category, Well Said, who received the most votes in the balloting, is declared the official winner and his connections will be presented with the O’Brien trophy on Saturday night.

Earlier this week the Ontario racing commission put a freeze on all horses owned by Bulletproof. The stable made upwards of $10M this year, and is the leading barn in harness racing.

Andrew Beyer is at it again, speaking of the turnaround claiming trainers. This time he is talking about Kirk Ziadie.

"One statistic in particular suggests that Ziadie, 41, is either a cheater or an amazing horseman. Over the past five years, when Ziadie has claimed horses from other trainers, those acquisitions have won 47 percent of the time in their first start for the new barn. It is a mind-boggling number. Ziadie improves almost every horse he gets his hands on, and he improves upon the work of almost every other trainer."

Bill Shanklin looks at pari-mutuel growth versus movie theaters.

Youbet is offering a 0% pick 3 for Sam Houston as a promotion. Yep, zero percent. ADW's competing with poker, and other ADW's offer us some bargains which we can take advantage of. The Sam Houston pick 3 was cut to a 12% take several years ago. They used to handle around $2000 in each pool, but now are doing well over double that.