TDN Writers' Room | Horse Racing Free Tips

Irad Ortiz, Jr. Talks Life Is Good, Recent Suspension On Writers’ Room

It was an eventful few months for three-time Eclipse champion jockey Irad Ortiz, Jr. Shortly after scoring a hat trick of victories at the Breeders' Cup, Ortiz was suspended 30 days for careless riding at Aqueduct. Upon his return, the 29-year-old picked up where he left off at Gulfstream, piloting winners left and right and over the weekend, added two more seven-figure Grade I wins to his trophy collection with victories in the Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational S. on back-to-back winner Colonel Liam (Liam's Map) and Pegasus World Cup Invitational S. aboard emergent superstar Life Is Good (Into Mischief). Tuesday, the sometimes polarizing rider sat down with the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland as the Green Group Guest of the Week to discuss his success, his suspension, his rise to the top of the game and whether or not he pays attention to either the positive or negative attention he receives from racing fans.

“Honestly, I know my horse is fast, but I never thought I was going to be on the lead by three or four lengths,” Ortiz said when asked if he was surprised by how easily Life Is Good outran presumptive Horse of the Year Knicks Go (Paynter) in the Pegasus. “But that's racing. [Sometimes] after the gates open, everything changes. I let him go into the first turn and then I just used my judgment. He was feeling good, he was running relaxed and going the right way, so I just didn't mess with him, I let him do his thing and keep going. The difference between him and some other horses; some other horses can go fast and hold their speed for six furlongs or a mile, but he can stay the distance. It's really hard to find a horse that can stay with his same speed and finish the way he finishes.”

Asked about the 30-day suspension he was handed by New York Racing Association stewards for a Dec. 3 incident in which he crowded a horse on the rail, causing apprentice jockey Omar Hernandez Moreno to fall off his mount, Ortiz took responsibility and said he had no issue with the punishment.

“We learn from our mistakes,” he said. “I made a mistake, it was not intentional, but I'm grateful and glad that the kid is okay. The stewards did their job. I agreed with them 100%. They gave me 30 days and I took it right away, I didn't say anything because I knew I made a mistake, so I'll pay for it. That's why they're there, to watch everybody and try to keep all the jockeys safe. I'm not perfect, I'm human, and now I'll just turn the page, learn from it and try not to do that again.”

Ortiz was also asked to reflect on his meteoric rise to the top of racing and whether or not he foresaw this level of success when he first came over to the U.S. in the late 2000s.

“I'm grateful and I thank god I am where I am, but when you get here, there are a lot of good jockeys,” he said. “I work hard, but you never know what's going to happen. Are you going to get the opportunities right away or not? Sometimes it'll take you five, six, seven, eight years until people start giving you a chance. So I always had big dreams, but I never pressured myself like, 'I have to be there.' It never was like that. I just worked step by step and tried to do the right thing every time someone gave me an opportunity. And that's the way we did it. My agent, Steve Rushing, does a great job, and since I started working with him, everything changed a little bit. I got better numbers. I got better chances. We got better horses. You need a little bit of everything: you need a good agent, you need to do the right thing, you need the right horses and you need the opportunity from the owners and trainers.”

Elsewhere on a jam-packed show, which is also sponsored by Coolmore, West Point Thoroughbreds, Lane's End, the Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders, XBTV and Legacy Bloodstock, the writers discussed the courtroom drama in Seth Fishman's doping trial, the back-and-forth of the Bob Baffert vs. NYRA hearings and T.D. Thornton's comparison of racing's current era to the steroid era in baseball. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The post Irad Ortiz, Jr. Talks Life Is Good, Recent Suspension On Writers’ Room appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Fox Sports’ Mike Mulvihill Joins the TDN Writers’ Room

Fox Sports has embraced horse racing and has acquired the broadcasting rights for the GI Belmont S., starting in 2023. And one of the reasons why is that in Executive Vice President, Head of Strategy and Analytics Mike Mulvihill, Fox has an executive who likes the sport and is bullish on its future, particularly when it comes to the gambling element. This week, Mulvihill joined the team on the TDN Writers' Room podcast, presented by Keeneland, to talk about Fox's increasing interest in the racing. Mulvihill was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week.

“Fox Sports is in the business of premium live events,” Mulvihill said when asked about Fox's acquisition of the Belmont rights. “We want to be in the business of championship events, special events, whether that's the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Belmont Stakes and anything else that's out there. We pride ourselves on being the leaders in live sports event consumption.”

Mulvihill and his team see the Belmont as more than just a sporting event. Fox, which operates the sports betting website Fox Bets and has a 25% ownership interest in NYRA Bets, wants to be a player in the gaming market and sees horse racing as an important part of that strategy.

“I like to say that we are evolving from being strictly a media content brand into being a media and gaming brand,” Mulvihill said. “That has a lot to do with the recent legalization of sports betting. But it also has to do with the partnership that we have with NYRA in NYRA Bets. Not only is [the Belmont] a championship event in and of itself, but it becomes an opportunity for us to really promote and try to drive new business and drive sign ups and new accounts for that NYRA Bets business. So it really works, both as media content–which is the business we've always been in–and it works as an engine for our gaming business, which is a newer business for us.”

Mulvihill said Fox plans to focus on the gambling element on future Belmont broadcasts, but, at the same time, does not want to ignore the casual fan who may not understand what a superfecta box is and is interested in the human interest stories that are always part of a big race. With that in mind, the plan, he said, is to have two separate broadcasts, one that will look more like a traditional racing broadcast and the other one meant for the horseplayer and sports bettor.

“I like to think we can do both,” he said. “And I think a template has been provided for us by ESPN and their presentation of Monday Night Football this year, where they have the traditional presentation on ESPN, and then they're doing the Manning cast on ESPN2, and that's getting a significant percentage of the audience. It's doing really well. It's worked out very, very well for them. I think we have an opportunity to do something similar where we can do a traditional presentation of the Belmont on Fox broadcast, and we can provide an alternate presentation for some part of the day on our cable platform and tailor that really to people that are more regular players and that maybe aren't as interested in the lifestyle pieces.”

In other segments of the show, which is also sponsored by Coolmore, the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, West Point Thoroughbreds, Legacy Bloodstock and XBTV, the writers discussed such subjects as the Seth Fishman trial, the Bob Baffert hearing and jockey Mychel Sanchez being suspended for betting on mounts other than his own. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The post Fox Sports’ Mike Mulvihill Joins the TDN Writers’ Room appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Kentucky State Rep. Adam Koenig Discusses Breakage Bill On Writers’ Room

Breakage, the practice of rounding down bettors' payouts to the nearest 10 or even 20-cent number rather than paying the deserved amount to the penny, has long been a thorn in horseplayers' sides. Kentucky state representative Adam Koenig, an avid horseplayer himself, is trying to do something about it in his state. Wednesday morning, Koenig joined the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland as the Green Group Guest of the Week to discuss the bill he's sponsoring to eliminate breakage in Kentucky, as well as his proposed sports betting legislation, the successful effort to protect historical horse racing in the Bluegrass and more.

“Breakage laws go so far back that we can't even figure out when they were passed in Kentucky, but there was a time 100 years ago when the only place to go and legally make wagers was the racetrack,” Koenig explained. “The lines were deep and it was something done to make it easier to cash people out. They didn't have computer to figure out how much was being wagered. They were counting the money in the back and figuring out the odds by hand in real time. But obviously those days have come and gone, and it's time for our laws to reflect today's reality. Now we have an opportunity to do something about it, and this is going to be a comprehensive parimutuel wagering modernization bill.”

Koenig added that, especially in Kentucky with skyrocketing purses and the lucrative historical horse racing machines, accurately paying winning horseplayers is a matter of fairness.

“I live five minutes from Turfway,” he said. “Churchill Downs is building a beautiful facility there. They've got multiple facilities in Louisville. They've got a harness track in Hopkinsville. They're making plenty of money on the HHR facilities and I think, certainly on the breakage front, they can stand to help the bettors. We've taken care of the tracks. We've taken care of the breeders and the trainers and the jockeys. We need all of them to make the show run. But we also need bettors to make the show run. And by God, I'm going to take care of the bettors, not just because I am one, but because we need to take care of those folks without whom we don't have an industry.”

Elsewhere on the show, which is also sponsored by Coolmore, Lane's End, West Point Thoroughbreds, XBTV, the Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders and Legacy Bloodstock, Joe Bianca, Bill Finley and special guest co-host Randy Moss of NBC Sports touched on Michael Beychok's decision to stop playing the horses, the beginning of the trials in the doping scandal, the proposed four-race campaign of Flightline (Tapit) and more. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The post Kentucky State Rep. Adam Koenig Discusses Breakage Bill On Writers’ Room appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Flavien Prat Talks Flightline, SoCal Dominance On Writers’ Room

Saturday at Santa Anita, Flavien Prat, the perennial leading rider in California, racked up six wins and didn't finish worse than second on any of the day's mounts. It was the third time in the past year that Prat has won a half-dozen races at the Arcadia oval; in the previous 30 years, it only happened twice altogether. With that backdrop, Prat joined the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland Tuesday as the Green Group Guest of the Week to discuss his star turn since coming over from his native France, what it feels like to ride superstar Flightline (Tapit), whether he would consider a move to riding in New York and more.

“He's just a great, great animal,” Prat said of scintillating runaway GI Runhappy Malibu S. winner Flightline. “Really athletic, powerful, he has about everything you want in a runner. It seems like he has stamina as well. It's a pleasure to ride him. I try to enjoy every moment. You never know what the future could bring for him. The sky's the limit.”

Asked if it feels like he's going faster aboard Flightline than other horses, Prat said it's actually the opposite, “because it's like driving a car. When you're driving a good car and you're on the freeway going 80 miles an hour, it feels like you're going slow, right? With good horses, it's pretty much the same because it's so effortless.”

Elsewhere on the show, which is also sponsored by Coolmore, Hill 'n' Dale, Three Chimneys, Lane's End, West Point Thoroughbreds, XBTV, the Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders, the Minnesota Thoroughbred Association and Legacy Bloodstock, the writers reacted to the news of USADA not reaching a deal with to handle drug policy and enforcement for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, bid a not so pleasant farewell to Jorge Navarro and debated where Flightline stacks up with the great talents of the past 50 years. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The post Flavien Prat Talks Flightline, SoCal Dominance On Writers’ Room appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post