The "Gotham Hebrew Wager" · 4 hours ago
Me: Hastings, third race, two dollars to win on number 5, and two dollars to….
Teller: Ah, cahm ahn — is that all ya got? Listen, ask me about the “New York Jew Bet”.
Me: ???
Teller: Just ask me about it. Say “New York Jew Bet”.
Me: Uh, “New York Jew Bet”?
Teller: OK. Ya got five dollars?
Me: [holding up a blue piece of paper with the number “5” and a picture of Sir Wilfrid Laurier on it] Yeah.
Teller: OK, here’s what they do in New York when they just have five dollars to bet. Gimme the number of a horse you like.
Me: Uh, the 5.
Teller: OK, so two dollars to win on the 5. Now, gimme three other horses you like.
Me: Uh, the 2, the 3, and, uh, the 4.
Teller: OK… [punching the keyboard of his pari-mutuel register and pulling out the ticket as it comes out] Ya got a win bet on the 5, and then the 5 in an exacta wheel with those other three. Any of those come in second behind the 5, you get the exacta….
…
So the 5 comes in, followed by the 3. The $1 exacta together with the $2 win bet gives me $12 and change. I try the same bet twice more that day, winning once for $10.10, and losing once.
Other bon mots from the same cashier:
- “Don’t bet to place — that’s a fag bet”.
- “If ya don’t have the money, I’ll take your watch instead, that’s about five dollars, right? Come on, I need a new watch [holds out a bare wrist] — see? Don’t tell me your wife or grandmother bought ya that watch, you’ll make one of us cry!”
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Stayers' Watch: Gallant Man Handicap · 4 days ago
Thanks to The Blood-Horse and Thoroughbred Times, I almost missed the results of the second running of the Gallant Man Handicap at Hollywood Park. I know it’s a new race and is still un-graded — but as it was instituted as a prep for the Breeders’ Cup Marathon you would think that it would rate at least a mention in one of those major publications.
[Update: The Daily Racing Form did in fact report on the Gallant Man, bless their hearts…].
Anyway, thanks to Kayrite at the Thoroughbred Champions forum, here’s the YouTube video of the race. Kizzy’s Chaos wired the field to win the 1 5/8 mile stayers race on Hollywood’s synthetic track by four lengths. Church Service got up for second, just nosing out Medjool. Time: 2:43.48.
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Who cares about the humans? · 7 days ago
Now I don’t mean to get off on a rant here, but it seems to me that not only is the mainstream media virtually ignoring the sport of horse racing — compared to, say, “real” sports like poker and ultimate fighting — but it is also doing the sport no favours when horse racing does get coverage.
The recent announcement of the upcoming bio-pic of Secretariat has had me thinking about the portrayal of Thoroughbreds in mainstream media and entertainment. My concern with Disney’s movie and how its tentative plot-line were presented is that will hardly be about Secretariat at all, but rather the people around him. As I wrote earlier:
It will be the story of a typical American housewife who “finds herself”, leaving her old life behind as her new career supplants her family and marriage. Secretariat and Meadow Farm will be merely the catalysts for the story, rather than the story itself. If the catalyst was [Penny] Chenery opening a restaurant, or running for political office, the story could remain otherwise almost unchanged.
In contrast, for all its factual shortcomings, at least the movie Seabiscuit had the horse, and the sport of horse racing as a whole, at the centre of the story. The human characters were so unique that they could have only come together in the context of racing — and only a horse like Seabiscuit could have been the centre of their story.
The short shrift that horses and racing get in the movies is even more pronounced in TV broadcasts. Over the course of this year’s Triple Crown series, it seemed like the horses were largely an afterthought. There was little analysis of their past performances, nothing about the “key” races that earned those horses their chance to run in the Derby, Preakness, or Belmont. By contrast, it was the owners and trainers who received most of the coverage. The one exception that comes to mind was Mine That Bird and his trip to Churchill Downs in an ordinary horse trailer. However, even he was overshadowed by trainer Chip Woolley and his broken leg. Derby commentators latched onto those two stories so tightly that Woolley almost decked NBC’s Kenny Rice when he brought it up again immediately after Mine That Bird’s win — and I wouldn’t have blamed him.
This is what passes for reportage and analysis in mainstream coverage of horse racing: little or no legitimate pre-race analysis, but purely “human interest” stories, almost always about the horses’ human connections. So we get Kenny Rice and others yammering about horse trailers and broken legs. We get Kenny Mayne wasting screen-time prioer to the Belmont Stakes chatting with Woolley in his pick-up truck. We get Bob Costas — about whom I will defer to the mighty Dooce.
I’ll be blunt: I don’t care about the human interest angle. Sure, mention Woolley’s broken leg, or Rick Dutrow’s family and substance-abuse issues, ONCE — then move on. Regarding owners, trainers, and jockeys, the only thing I really care about is how well they bring their horses into the race, and what they’ve done to give their horses the best possible chance to win. Everything else is irrelevant. It is called horse racing, people — not jockey racing or trainer racing.
The so-called handicappers that the networks retain are almost as useless. On NBC, Mike Battaglia’s commentary is so pointless that he might as well be giving weather reports. And I swear, ABC’s Hank Goldberg couldn’t build a coherent sentence if it was made out of Lego. Just once I’d like to see a handicapper on TV who is both perceptive and articulate, and who can offer something like:
There’s a lot of early speed in this race, and A, B, and C may very well burn each other out early trying for the lead. If X and Y can stay close enough while stalking the pace one of them will take over on the far turn, but they risk either getting burned by the early pace or being too far back when the leaders tire. This sets things up perfectly for a stone closer like Z to come on in the late stages, and so I’m making him my pick.
… you know, something that might be Handicapping 101 to horseplayers but might be gold to a little old lady who would otherwise put her money on the horse whose jockey reminds her of her grandson Billy. Is that really too much to ask?
The lone exception to such poor mainstream coverage is Jerry Bailey. During last year’s Breeders’ Cup broadcast he analyzed the running styles of each horse in (I think) each race, and described where he thought they would be over the course of the race. During ABC’s Belmont broadcast Bailey applied a similar methodology in deconstructing the Preakness. Using overhead video footage, he pointed out where Mike Smith could have guided Mine That Bird to find the holes that Calvin Borel had found in the Derby, saving considerable ground as a result. His conclusion: if Borel had ridden Mine That Bird in the Preakness rather than Rachel Alexandra, Mine That Bird would have won by about 1/2 length, and they would be talking about a legitimate Triple Crown bid rather than a “Calvin Crown”. Agree or disagree with Bailey’s conclusions, but I don’t think anybody could disagree that we need more of that kind of analysis during horse racing broadcasts. Please sir, may I have some more?
Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.
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Stayers' Watch: Round Table Handicap (June 13) · 12 days ago
French-bred gelding Obrigado hadn’t won a race since the February 2007 San Luis Obispo Handicap. In-between he had been entered in 15 races, with his best finishes coming in April’s San Juan Capistrano (3rd) and last year’s Hollywood Turf Cup (2nd). Last week, however, Obrigado finally got it done, overpowering a field of four other horses in Hollywood Park’s Round Table Handicap (gr. IIIT). He rallied from last to sweep past Porfido en route to a 3 1/4-length win, with Zappa finishing third. Winning time: 2:54.49 on “firm” turf.
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Secretariat movie in the works at Disney · 16 days ago
Diane Lane will play Penny Chenery-Tweedy in Disney’s production of Secretariat, it was announced last week.
While it’s great that this long-rumoured project is finally getting the go-ahead, and that Penny Chenery’s full backing and co-operation will hopefully help to minimize the inevitable “Hollywood-ization”, I have a real concern that the movie will not be what fans hope for. According to the June 12 press release, “The script, written by Mike Rich of Finding Forrester and The Rookie, tells Mrs. Chenery’s compelling story of a suburban housewife and mother’s rise to be the “first lady of racing” after taking the reins of Meadow Farm after her father fell ill.”
This suggests to me that, as historically accurate as it might be, the focus of the movie won’t be on Secretariat, but rather on Chenery. It will be the story of a typical American housewife who “finds herself”, leaving her old life behind as her new career supplants her family and marriage. Secretariat and Meadow Farm will be merely the catalysts for the story, rather than the story itself. If the catalyst was Chenery opening a restaurant, or running for political office, the story could remain otherwise almost unchanged. In other words, Secretariat might be a good movie, but it won’t be a Secretariat movie.
*Sigh*. I’ve always thought that the ideal Secretariat bio-pic would focus on the Triple Crown. Those three races, with perhaps the Wood Memorial as a prologue, would form a great story arc. In many ways it would parallel Homer’s Iliad, with Secretariat and Sham playing the roles of Achilles and Hector, respectively, and their human connections as the supporting cast, rather than the centre of the story. In this context, the 1973 Belmont would be equivalent to Achilles dragging Hector’s body around the walls of Troy.
I hope I’m wrong — I will still look forward to seeing the movie when it comes out — but I refuse to have high expectations.
Update: Read what other bloggers/fans think. Steve Haskin waxes poetic about his long-term crush on Diane Lane. The Internet Movie Database already has an entry.
