Elliott, Dime Bets, Claiming Crown
From the NTRA Thoroughbred Notebook: Philadelphia Park jockey and Smarty Jones rider Stewart Elliott received a 2004 ESPY award for Best Jockey from ESPN, beating out Jerry Bailey, Edgar Prado, and Alex Solis for the honor.
The NTRA has teamed up with new association member Youbet.com to host a series of online handicapping contests, each of which will offer cash prizes along with spots in the DRF/NTRA National Handicapping Championship. The first contest will open on August 21.
Also in the news: The Cherokee Nation requested 12 racing dates from the Oklahoma Horse Racing Commission on Thursday. The tribe would like to offer racing at Will Rogers Downs, which last hosted events three years ago (Native American Times).
A really good idea from Steven Crist: Thrills for a dime. “Ten cents a bet? The idea here is not to permit 10-cent show bets, but to offer multi-horse boxes and part-wheels in extremely low denominations. This could open up the world of super-exotic betting to many ordinary players who currently can’t afford to participate, or are forced into playing too small a number of combinations to collect more than once in a blue moon” (Daily Racing Form).
And Claiming Crown analysis from Jeremy Plonk: “Saturday’s six-pack of stakes races from Canterbury Park in Minnesota is a handicapper’s feast. Leave the wide-open clichés at the front door — all of these races will take heavy doses of speculation and time-honored methods of handicapping starter allowance races” (NTRA).
