Updates on Ours, Heliskier and Some Dialogue

BOBO

Bourbonlogy got rained out last Sunday.  Not so much because of the weather, but because of the track conditions.  The race was washed off the turf and we were ready to go anyway.  There were a few scratches that made the race a bit easier for us but racing was called after a few races because of unsafe track conditions.  A trainer and a jockey told me it was akin to a pothole strewn road with puddles hiding the worst of it.  Of course a thoroughbred’s thin leg getting stuck and twisted in a hole could be disastrous and if the riders think it’s unsafe, who am I to disagree?

Bobo will go this Thursday in a Maiden Special Weight over the turf course going a mile and 70 yards.  She’ll start out of the chute and make a lap around the oval. She’ll open in the wagering as the 4-1 2^nd choice in the morning line behind Clay Brinson trained Bluegrass Lucy.  I’ll be back with a full profile of the race later in the week.

I’ll also have to retry the “View of the Owners” video blog again, though not this time.  My quick trip to IL has turned into a week-long grind that won’t get me home until sometime very late Friday night or early Saturday morning so I will miss Bobo’s first start in person, though I will be watching in a hotel room somewhere near Detroit.  Or, on my Horse Races Now app if I’m able to pick up a ticket to the Red Sox game that night while they are in Motown!

HELISKIER

Word is still positive on Heliskier.  The champion Minnesota bred gelding is banged up but doing okay after going down to his nose at the break on Sunday, ending his undefeated streak and generating one of my most read blog posts ever when I wrote about some of the behaviors I (and others) witnessed when it was learned the horse nearly went down.

Feedback from that post has been interesting.   I have had some dialogue with people who feel that I misunderstood what they – or folks with them – were expressing.  I think we have differing viewpoints on that and it was a good lesson for a lot of people in perception versus reality.  You may indeed be cheering for your horse hitting the front in a race but if that cheering comes at the same time the track announcer says that a horse juts face planted, your actions may be misconstrued.  Hell, that’s a lesson even I needed to relearn in a way.

This fellow pointed out that by my saying that I was never happier to see a horse fade like Careless Hunter did that I was basically cheering for their horse to be hurt as well.  That wasn’t the case at all, of course.  I didn’t want the kids’ bad behavior to be rewarded BUT I can see his point.  I knew the horse went out too fast and was tired.  The horse wasn’t hurt and no one suspected that he was either.  I also didn’t cheer and or high five someone when I heard that he had packed up the fight.  HOWEVER by not really thinking about how that statement could be taken by someone before I wrote it, I did, kind of, the same thing – I reacted but didn’t think. At the end of the day, I wish nothing but the best for Careless Hunter’s connections and hope they pick up a couple of wins before the summer is done, they seem like really good people.

ELLIE

Elusive Edition has been training okay.  She’s very smart and she simply LOVES to run – two things you can’t train a horse.  She has been experiencing some aches and pains, nothing major but she’s had to rest a bit throwing her a bit off schedule and causing us some concern.  We’re getting to know her better and better and she is really quite a character.  Most definitely one of the best parts of owning these horses is getting to know them as individuals and Ellie is a riot – and most definitely still a baby in some ways as well!

She’s rested a bit and gone back to the racetrack.  We’ll need to pick things up on her in the next week or so and see her develop.  It’s exciting but also our optimism and excitement is still tempered with some caution as it always should be with 2-year olds.

CANTERBURY RACING CLUB

This is been two things: more work that I imagined and more fun than I could have hoped.  The people involved are absolute gems.  We had our first race on Friday night and Mundy, our mare, gave everyone a thrill as she took command in the lane and looked like a winner before tiring to third.  The pace was a bit hot and the turf was a bit soft and both contributed to her fatigue, but it was an exciting run and the folks really turned out for it.  Hopefully we’ll have our gelding, Ask Eddy, race this weekend and I’ll get to meet more of the great folks in the Club.  I doubt I’ll ever meet all 179 of them, but I’m hoping to, even if I will forget most of the names – never the faces, but I’m HORRIBLE remembering names!

 

The start has been a bit slow, but hopefully we'll pick up the pace and hit the winners' circle a few times along the way.

Welcome to the World, TURF!

Today marks the launch of a new venture: TURF.  TURF is an international collection of horse racing bloggers.  We represent a diverse group of writers, passionate about the sport of horse racing.  The group is made up of noted turf writers, horse owners, health specialists, trainers, fans, handicappers and pedigree analysts from three continents.  While we are small we hope to make a big impact on the world of thoroughbred racing. 

Given the diversity of the group we hope that through our home page we can provide a landing place that racing fans as well as insiders will want to check with every day in order to get varied opinions on issues and events in racing.  Additionally, the group has a Facebook page that will provide additional interaction with readers.  Through the use of various social media the level of interactivity between writers and readers should be high enabling both parties to benefit from the relationship. 

For the launch of the group this week, many members’ posts will feature the Breeders’ Cup as subject matter.  For example, later this week this blog will feature a post on Furthest Land, a $35,000 claim that went on to fame as winner of the Breeder’s Cup Dirt Mile – a dream that all of us hold when we get into this business. Bloggers will continue to move forward writing about their own interests in racing and there will always be something new to read though the occasional “theme week” with enable us to tackle an issue or even collectively and from varying viewpoints.

Please bookmark the home page, follow the group on Facebook, circle your favorites on Google+ and interact with individual writers on Twitter.  Visit often and leave comments – I know all of us look forward to interacting with other racing fans!

Members of TURF are:

Valerie Grash (Foolish Pleasure/FilliesFirst)

Dana Byerly (Green But Game)

Jessica Chapel (Railbird)

Teresa Genaro (Brooklyn Backstretch)

Ted Grevelis (Owning Racehorses)

Kevin Martin (Colin’s Ghost)

Steve Zorn (The Business of Racing)

Sid Fernando (Sid Fernando + Observations)

Keith McCalmont (Triple Dead Heat)

Gina Rarick (Gallop France)

Chris Hernandez (Giving My Ten Cents)

Fran Jurga (Hoof Blog/The Jurga Report)

Bill Pressey (ThoroEdge)

Alastair Middleton Horse Racing in Korea

Sue Dalebroux (Post Parade)

Alan Mann (Left at the Gate)

Frank Vespe (That’s Amore Stable)

Gene Kershner (Equispace)

Anthony Falbo (The Turk)

Kate Hunter (Keiblog)

Don't All Us Bloggers Have This in Us?

I do quite a bit of traveling with my current job and a lot of that is windshield time throughout the upper Midwest. During those long hours I imagine what life is going to be like when we get our first great horse. That tends to extrapolate out to long involved stories about the development of the horse, big stakes races and the twists and turns of life. Naturally, as one whose racing itch is partially scratched by writing about it, I feel that there is a book in there somewhere. I have bits and pieces of it all over the place, written and in my mind, and I'm not even sure yet where it is going or what my ending will be. I don't think that this is an uncommon occurance, but then I have nothing to compare it to either. One thing that I do know is that it's easier to write about my own experiences so I will be playing off those somewhat, but I know from my own mind's meanderings that there will be more fiction than fact in the story. How much is yet to be determined.

Below is the introduction piece. I can't say how much I'll post here or how frequently, but for better or worse, below is the framework that may lead to a book someday. The book that I think most bloggers feel is inside of them somewhere. This one is inside of me.

INTRODUCTION

I have heard people say that the backside of a racetrack smells like the livestock barn at the State Fair. I say that it does not - at least on the backsides that I've been around - because the stalls are kept pristine, the common areas raked and manicured and, in summer, the smell of blossoming flowers are everywhere. Of course I could just be immune to it because on the backside in the early morning is my favorite place to be. I don’t have to have a horse working that day. The hub of activity of an active racetrack in the dawn’s first light is like magic.

If you look one way, you see horses cooling down on circular walkers after coming back from the track from a sharpening three furlong breeze or a stamina building two mile long jog. A bit further beyond is the hub of activity inside a barn where riders mount and dismount, changing their tack from horse to horse to get them exercised according to the trainer’s specifications. Grooms muck the stalls while their chargers are absent making sure that when the star's work is done that there is fresh bedding to welcome the tired horse home. As the training morning draws to a close, tack is polished and hung up, ready for the same routine tomorrow.

A short walk away is the main track and perhaps also a training track at some of the larger venues. Here is where the horses really put in the time and the work to get ready for the afternoon (or evening). On the outside, horses jog to get muscles loose in the chill of the early morning air. Toward the rail, exercise riders chirp and horses break off for their scheduled and timed morning work, showing their owners and trainers what they have in terms of speed, temperament and stability.

A lot is gleaned from these early morning works. A rough rule of thumb is that a horse in shape and within himself can work up to 5 furlongs (a furlong being 1/8 of a mile) in twelve seconds a furlong. Once you move over 5 furlongs you can add a few fifths of a second, but you get the idea. Two horses can go four furlongs in an identical :48.3 seconds. One comes back a bit winded, the other all full of himself – like he barely scratched the surface of his talent. The time says nothing. HOW the horse did it tells everything.

Master interpreters of this information are the trainers. Men and women who have dedicated their lives to the horse, racing and the very difficult lifestyle that goes with it. If you’re a southern California based trainer you can rotate from Hollywood to Santa Anita and summer at Del Mar. If you’re based in New York you can toil at Aqueduct through the winter, bracket the summer at Belmont and escape the city at Saratoga in the heat of August. Even smaller circuits like Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Chicago offer the opportunity for trainers to go home at night. But across America there are scores of other trainers who live out of RVs two thirds of the year and travel routes like Shakopee, Minnesota to Oklahoma City to Oldsmar, Florida and back again or East Boston to Philadelphia to Miami and then back up the Coast. Along the way birthdays are missed, anniversaries are celebrated on the road and there is rarely such a thing as a day off.

Sometimes it’s hard for the casual fan to remember, but the horses are alive. They’re not machines. They have good days and bad days and routine aches and pains the same way that human athletes do. However, a horse can’t talk and tell us what’s wrong. They require care and feeding every day of the year. There are meals to be had, stalls to be mucked, vet care to be given and exercise to be done whether it’s Christmas, Thanksgiving or last Thursday. The trainer and his staff of assistants and grooms are there each and every day to make it happen. You don’t do something like this for the money. You do it because it’s your calling and your passion. You don’t last otherwise.

Later in the day, these finely tuned athletes are turned over to, in my mind, the strongest, bravest and toughest professional athletes in the world: the jockey. Jocks can lead a similar nomadic existence as the trainers do. They are self employed just like the trainers and are just as dedicated to their craft. Notable exception: no one tells a trainer how much he can weigh. The average weight of a jockey is roughly 110 pounds. The amount a horse may be assigned to carry can vary up to 130 pounds for the greatest of handicap horses. The norm, though, is usually less than 120 pounds and some jocks have a hard time staying at a weight that keeps them competitive. Legendary are the stories of jockeys spending hours in steam rooms, hot boxes, manure piles and other contraptions just to sweat off enough pounds to meet their race weight. Bulimia has also been known to make the rounds at jockey colonies around the country. The hell that these men and women put their bodies through to make weight has, hopefully, been aided in recent years by better nutrition and training methods, but it is still a tough way to make a living. Piloting high strung, half ton athletes moving at 40 mph in close quarters requires instinctive reflexes and a feel for the process. There is no time for thinking, only reacting. No other professional athlete can put together all the elements necessary to be a successful jockey and they deserve all the praise and respect in the world – certainly more than these independent contractors get. In what other sport does an ambulance follow you around as you work?

Who’s left? Owners. They come in all shapes and sizes. They can be gracious and accommodating. They can be tyrannical and abusive. Some own huge stables full of horses over several tracks around the country. Some own one horse and live out their racing dreams in a bull ring somewhere. We’re a strange breed of our own, the horse owner. People have said we have more money than brains and in many cases that’s true. We love the game, the sport and the industry – yes, that is racing all rolled into one depending upon how you are looking at it – the equine and the competition. Many love the money and glory and others are content to watch their horse race a few times over the summer and then let them play on the farm until next season rolls around.

What will follow is a fictionalized autobiography. It is not how I wish my life went, because I love where I grew up, how I grew up and the family I was lucky enough to grow up around and the one that I founded myself. The events that shaped my actual life brought me to the place that I am now and I like the place that I am at now. What it could best be described as is a fictionalized account of a life in racing. A bit of what will follow is true. Most is simply made up. It comes from my imagination. In my long car trips across the Midwest I have had dreams in my head of where my horses should go, what races we would win and the speeches I would give if given half a chance. I finally decided that I can have that half a chance – I only had to make it up.

Thanks for reading.