The post NBC’s Randy Moss To Talk Horses On Super Bowl Radio Show appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Nostalgia for Hollywood Park will be especially piquant now that Arlington Park is in the sickening throes of a similar demise. It's no longer just John Henry, winner of two Arlington Millions and three Hollywood Invitational Handicaps, that unites these two storied venues. In both cases, it's hard to refute the narrative that football has long superseded horseracing in popular culture; that our own sport is like a faded, black-and-white movie, with a script that embarrassingly preserves outdated attitudes, treasured only by an obstinate minority of aficionados soon to be finally inundated by the inexorable tides of the digital age.

(Click below to listen to this column as a podcast.)

Well, I don't know about that. It wasn't so long ago that everyone was prophesying the demolition of cinemas, outflanked by the domestic miracles of VHS, DVD and streaming. Same with bookshops, which have salvaged a viable market among people who actually feel relieved to drag their eyes from the tyranny of a small screen. But both cinema and publishing first had to be goaded from their complacency. Books were being churned out contemptuously, already halfway to garbage, so cheap was the paper and binding; they had to be made into beautiful objects that you would enjoy handling and possessing. Cinema, similarly, realized that it had to feel like an event, a spectacle, a proper indulgence.

None of us who know the timeless enchantment of the Thoroughbred will ever despair of its ability to captivate new generations of fans; to maintain a glamor once so easily conflated with that of the silver screen, as when founding shareholders of Hollywood Park included the Warner brothers, Walt Disney, Sam Goldwyn, Bing Crosby and Ronald Colman.

But everything depends on our proving equal to the stewardship of these noble animals. And it would be a blithe kind of fellow who congratulated us that we have no need, unlike cinema and publishing when they were in a corner, to raise our game.

As it is, we see a lot of cynics shoehorning high-sounding principles of equity and freedom into the service of their own interests, even when those appear quite blatantly opposed to those of the racehorse and the industry it sustains. Such grubby opportunism is hardly unique to our own walk of life, of course, but you would like to think that even the most self-absorbed and short-sighted members of our community can see how dangerously the stakes have been raised.

Sarah Andrew

Not that these alone need to see the bigger picture. Every time we lose a Hollywood Park, an Arlington, we can't blame only those whose conduct is disfiguring our standing in Main Street. The rest of us need to meet a crisis on this scale with commensurate flair and enterprise. God knows there's no shortage of people in this game with exceptional financial resources and, you know what, maybe some might even owe their wealth to more than hard work and a little luck. Maybe some of them are actually pretty smart, too. In which case, it seems inexcusable if enough of them can't get together and head off the next storied track closure. Just imagine the virtuous circle within their not-for-profit compass: low takeouts stimulating handle, handle stimulating prizemoney and facilities, in turn stimulating field sizes, further stimulating handle.

Coming from a little country like England, I am unqualified to say (though I might guess) why some American horsemen should prefer an existential crisis to fester under the sacrosanct purview of states, rather than tolerate the kind of national solution it plainly requires. As it is, however, that mosaic of fractured interests might well create an opportunity for exactly the kind of dynamism we might sooner hope to see applied to the repair of a dysfunctional system.

Say the current impasse between Bob Baffert and Churchill stays just as it is. Say his attorneys can't prise open the door to the Derby; and Baffert isn't big-hearted enough to absolve his patrons of an invidious sense that their fidelity is being tested in public; and those patrons, for their part, overlook that they are themselves only custodians of a dream for many others, from the breeder to the farrier, who will only ever get one shot at the Derby.

Well, if that remains the case, then what would you expect to be going through the head of any bold racetrack impresario out there right now? He or she will be musing over a first Saturday in May bereft of Messier (Empire Maker), Newgrange (Violence), potentially Corniche (Quality Road), and a whole bunch of other talents being developed by the most powerful barn in the country, maybe Blackadder (Quality Road) if he wins the El Camino Real Derby on Saturday; and not forgetting the fillies, like Adare Manor (Uncle Mo) and Eda (Munnings). How about lining up that lot for a million bucks over 10 furlongs, sometime at the beginning of May? You'd get eyeballs, and you might very well find yourself with a horse that outvotes the Derby winner at the Eclipse Awards this time next year.

Now there's a notion that might concentrate a few minds. And it would certainly conform with the spirit of the age–which is to say, it would bring together two different entities by offering the same answer to the question: “Screw everyone else, how do I gain most?”

Classic Causeway on debut last summer | Sarah Andrew

If that were to happen, then the GIII Sam F. Davis S. will doubtless come to seem so much shadowboxing. I hope not, because it would be wonderful to see Classic Causeway (Giant's Causeway) emulate White Abarrio (Race Day) in boosting the form of the GII Kentucky Jockey Club S.

This is one of only three colts eked from the final coverings of the great Giant's Causeway before his death in the spring of 2018, and I'm glad to see Brian Lynch laying down such business-like works over six and seven furlongs at Palm Meadows. I'm not sure what the masters of the past might say about modern trainers getting horses fit 48 seconds at a time, but I do know that Lynch will be playing to the genetic strengths of this particular colt.

After Giant Game bombed out in the GIII Holy Bull S., the onus is on Classic Causeway to carve a fitting memorial to their sire, who recently brought up a posthumous landmark with his 100th graded stakes winner. Classic Causeway did have the raw class to dash clear on debut at Saratoga last summer, but as a son of a Thunder Gulch mare he's entitled to the improvement he needs, with maturity and distance, to claw back the McPeek pair who had too much “foot” for him last fall.

Certainly a breakout performance from Classic Causeway would feel like a wholesome development in this whole Derby nightmare, as an evocation of old school principles among horses and horsemen alike. Because it's not just the rebels who have a cause. Don't forget that Mariah's Storm (Rahy), the dam of Giant's Causeway, won four graded stakes round Arlington; and his sire's mother Terlingua (Secretariat) won her first three starts all at Hollywood Park. Everything we do, every single thing we do, is built on the work of those who went before us; and everything we do, accordingly, should be undertaken with a view to handing on their legacy in the best possible shape.

The post This Side Up: Not Yet a Lost Cause appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Both the Super Bowl and Kentucky Derby air on NBC.

The post Twin Spires Glow Orange in Honor of Bengals appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Eclipse Award tickets are available for $425 each or $4,000 for a table of 10. For additional information, log on to the NTRA website at https://www.ntra.com/eclipse-awards/.

The “black-tie optional” Eclipse Awards dinner and awards ceremony will be held in an expansive chalet adjacent to Santa Anita Park's iconic clubhouse beginning at 4:00 p.m. (PT). The dinner and awards, which begin at 5:00 p.m. (PT), will be followed by an After Party in The Chandelier Room, Santa Anita's art deco masterpiece overlooking the racetrack and San Gabriel Mountains. The Eclipse Awards on Thursday evening kicks off a festive weekend of activities highlighted by racing Friday through Sunday. Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, will take place on Sunday, Feb. 13.

Eclipse Awards voting is conducted by the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters (NTWAB), Daily Racing Form, National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) member racing officials and Equibase field personnel. The Eclipse Awards ceremony is produced by the NTRA.

The Eclipse Awards are named after the great 18th-century racehorse and foundation sire Eclipse, who began racing at age five and was undefeated in 18 starts, including eight walkovers. Eclipse sired the winners of 344 races, including three Epsom Derbies.

The post Eclipse Awards At Santa Anita Park On Feb. 10; Tickets On Sale Now appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

The bet was tied into a promotion at his Gallery Furniture Stores in Houston. Anyone buying a mattress worth $3,000 or more prior to the Derby would get the mattress for free if the betting favorite won the Derby. The promotion was so successful that McIngvale sold about 2,000 mattresses, making their combined value $6 million. McIngvale said the markup on the mattresses was 100%, meaning he would have been out of pocket about $3 million on the mattresses if the horse had won.

Once McIngvale started to do the math, he realized he could create what amounted to a no-lose situation.

With Essential Quality going off at 2.90-1, McIngvale's $2.4-million bet would have turned into a profit of $6,960,000 had he won. That would have been enough to cover the costs associated with giving away so many mattresses for free. The defeat meant that McIngvale was out $2.4 million, but that is less than the near $3 million he made by selling so many mattresses.

“I'm very glad I did it,” McIngvale said Monday. “It made the store really busy for two weeks. Not only did they buy mattresses, they bought a lot of other things. In this crazy age of Amazon retailing, if we don't do something that sets us apart we're going to be put out of business by the Amazon people or by people that sell these inexpensive mattresses in a box. The promotion was great for bringing people out. It was fun. It's too bad Essential Quality didn't win but it was an exciting race and I hear the ratings were good. It was something that gave horse racing a shot in the arm.”

McIngvale has run similar promotions that tied into bets he made on the World Series, the Super Bowl and the NCAA tournament. He made a successful $3.46-million bet on the Tampa By Buccaneers to cover the spread in this year's Super Bowl.

“I was really amazed to find that out that we sold as many mattresses for this as we did for the Super Bowl,” he said.

McIngvale made all $2.4 million of his bets on track at Churchill Downs rather than through an ADW or in Las Vegas. The cut for purses for on-track bets is 10%, which adds up to $240,000 infusion into the purse account. The cut from an ADW bet is just 5%, and had someone in Las Vegas booked his bet, the horsemen would have gotten no money.

“The people in Kentucky were very happy that I bet all this money on track,” he said. “I could have gone to Las Vegas and bet the money with someone out there or bet it offshore. If I did that, the track would have gotten nothing. I wanted to support the ecosystem of horse racing so I made the bet at Churchill Downs. That way we maximized the amount of money that horsemen got, that the ecosystem got. It's crazy that some people in the horse racing business bet with a bookie or go offshore to a place like Costa Rica. They're not supporting racing.”

Prepared to bet more than the $2.4 million, McIngvale had $4 million wired to Churchill Downs before his arrival. He made his bets over time and in increments, starting with a $500,000 wager on Friday.

“We wanted to seed the money into the pool where it wasn't such a shock to the system,” he said. “I didn't want to bet it all early and I didn't want to bet it all late. I wanted to give the betting public a chance to react to my bet.”

With the money having been wired to Churchill before the race, McIngvale wasn't required to make his wagers through a mutuel clerk. He did, however, make a $100,000 win bet at the windows that was staged for the benefit of the NBC cameras.

McIngvale said he will consider bringing the promotion back for future runnings of the Derby.

“The difference between this bet and the sports bets is the best you're going to do on a sports or football bet is +140 or +150,” he said. “With this, I got +280 on the favorite. That's a pretty good deal. The problem is that not too many horse races can handle a bet that big.”

The post Despite Losing Bet, McInvgale, Racing Come Out Winners appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Track Shill was foaled at Brookdale Farm in 2014. By Artie Schiller, the dark bay won his one start at Gulfstream Park before owner William Sorren retired him. The gelding's career ended when he broke a sesamoid in his right front leg during training. 

Sorren wanted to ensure the horse found a good home once he retired from racing, so he enlisted the help of William and Lyn Rainbow, who broke the gelding. The Rainbows suggested that Track Shill be sent to Track to Trail Thoroughbreds, a program in Naples, Fla., that focuses on taking injured racehorses directly from the racetrack or training farm, rehabilitating them and finding them homes in Lee and Collier counties. 

At Track to Trail facility, Track Shill was introduced to Corp. Aaron Eubanks, a sheriff's deputy for Lee County who had recently lost his patrol horse to colic. Eubanks fostered Track Shill for a month and then adopted him, renaming him Deputy Maverick. 

Eubanks believed Maverick would make a quality police horse and the gelding was deputized once he completed mounted patrol training. Maverick has his own badge, which is the same one Lee County detectives wear.

The gelding was part of a fleet of officers invited to assist with crowd control outside the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, where the Super Bowl will be held on Sunday, Feb. 7. 

Though a last-minute injury to his left front leg will keep him from attending the actual event, the gelding has raised awareness as to what racehorses can do once they retire from the track.

Read more at the Lexington Herald-Leader. 

The post From The Racetrack To The Super Bowl, Thoroughbreds Can Do Anything appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post