We’re just a few hours away from the Kentucky Oaks, when all eyes will be on likely post-time favorite Rachel’s Valentina, trying to emulate her dam, 2009 Oaks winner and Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra, with a win. I’m a fangirl, she’s my pick. For the more considered and better-priced opinions of other handicappers, check the Kentucky Oaks day picks grid on Hello Race Fans.
Earlier this week, Golden Gate Fields announced that it hired Angela Hermann as its new race caller, replacing Michael Wrona, who moved to Santa Anita. Hermann comes to her new gig as the former racing analyst and substitute announcer at Canterbury Park, and she’s now the only full-time female race caller working in the U.S. She’s not the first, though — that would be Jefferson Downs’ Ann Elliott, who began calling at the defunct New Orleans track in 1962. Her almost forgotten story emerged with a tweet from Ron Flatter, who shared an episode of What’s My Line that Elliott appeared on that same year. Let T.D. Thornton pick up the story:
[Elliott] was comfortable in front of a mike, already had a decent local following, and the small track could reap the benefits of the novelty of having a lady announcer. What could go wrong?
Well, for starters, Elliott got booed lustily the first time she called a race. Shortly thereafter, an inebriated owner barged into the booth and started rooting for his horse in the middle of a call. Elliott, trying to keep her composure, had to lean so far out the window that she almost fell to the grandstand. Eventually, the racetrackers and fans took a liking to her, and she to them.
Keep reading.
Posted by JC in Racing on 05/06/2016 @ 12:56 pm / Tagged Angela Hermann, Ann Elliott, Kentucky Oaks, Race Callers, Racing History, Women in Racing / Follow @railbird on Twitter
I was feeling the American Pharoah hangover. I didn’t have a Kentucky Derby horse, I was more interested in the Oaks — why not take a year off from this one race with its oversized field and tendency to chaos after we finally, finally get a Triple Crown winner? The feeling passed with the draw. Just like that, 20 horses slotted into the starting gate, and the excitement came back.
I still don’t have a Kentucky Derby horse, but I do have a few links to share:
1. The prep and historical criteria spreadsheet is updated with the 2016 field. For the past two or three years, I’ve thought it was time to revisit some of factors, such as the key preps, or the reliance on Beyer speed figures, but as a quick reference and a check on exuberant handicapping, the info holds up.
2. Keep the sheet open in a tab while you read why you shouldn’t pick Nyquist.
3. Who else should you play? Hand your Saturday party guests the Hello Race Fans Kentucky Derby cheat sheet to answer that question.
4. The Thomas Herding “Patterns of Motion Analysis for the Kentucky Derby” report is great reading each year — it’s a different way to think about each of the starters, and how they’ll react to being in a 20-horse field, that breaks through all the usual angles. This year’s edition is as insightful as ever about a crop that everyone seems a little stumped by, even if Kerry Thomas and Pete Denk are as flummoxed as observers at Churchill Downs have been by this year’s UAE Derby winner: “Lani moves very methodically yet runs with a strange Jeckyl-and-Hyde intensity,” they write. “This is a very unique profile.”
5. Sure, Lani has a unique profile. But is it a winner’s profile? If you’re looking for an reason to bet him, then Jon White’s Kentucky Derby strikes system gives you one — he has only a single strike against him. Lani also has one of the best pedigrees for the distance, says Valerie Grash.
6. Unless there’s a scratch and Laoban draws in, the Derby pace looks like:
7. The Bathing Index. (If Mo Tom wins, I’m a convert.)
Posted by JC in Racing on 05/05/2016 @ 3:47 pm / Tagged Kentucky Derby, Lani, Mo Tom, Nyquist / Follow @railbird on Twitter
This spring* brings a bounty of books with ties to horse racing, and only one is about the 12th Triple Crown winner — Joe Drape’s American Pharoah: The Untold Story of the Triple Crown Winner’s Legendary Rise, which comes out on April 26. If this biography by a New York Times writer of the first horse to sweep the American classics in 37 years isn’t definitive, it’s still the book anyone else who tries to write about American Pharoah will have to cite.
Two more new releases are set for April 26 — Eliza McGraw’s Here Comes Exterminator! tells the story of the longshot winner of the 1918 Kentucky Derby. The author’s history with the great horse goes deep:
My affection and reverence for Exterminator started when I read Mildred Mastin Pace’s 1955 “Old Bones, the Wonder Horse†as a child. I became re-interested with his story when I was writing an article about cavalry horses in World War I, and saw contemporary headlines. Now, I’ve become obsessed, and spend hours at the Library of Congress and the National Sporting Library in Middleburg, Va., leafing through old copies of the Thoroughbred Records from the 1920s. Last year, my preoccupation took me to Pennsylvania, to visit Garrett and Muriel McDaniel. Garrett is Henry McDaniel’s great-nephew. “These were Uncle Henry’s,†he told me, handing over a worn pair of binoculars. They felt heavy and cool in my hand, and I imagined the thrill McDaniel felt as he watched Exterminator flash around the track.
McGraw writes more about Exterminator and her research on Raceday 360.
For the more literary-minded, there’s The Sport of Kings, the second novel by Hemingway/PEN award finalist C.E. Morgan. Set on a breeding farm owned by a powerful Kentucky family, centered on a horse named Hellsmouth, it’s described by the publisher as “an unflinching portrait of lives cast in shadow by the enduring legacy of slavery.” (Put it on the shelf next to Lord of Misrule.) You can read an excerpt on the publisher’s website.
The Legend of Zippy Chippy: Life Lessons from Horse Racing’s Most Lovable Loser, by humorist William Thomas, is in bookstores (and ready to ship from Amazon) today. There’s been some good press around this book and the Zippy Chippy story, such as this delightful New York Post feature. Zippy’s enjoying a happy retirement at Old Friends’ Cabin Creek farm.
If you’re interested in the intersection of horse racing and tech, or the collision of social media and the Zenyatta fandom, Holly Kruse’s Off-Track and Online: The Networked Spaces of Horse Racing has you covered. Kruse approaches an “overlooked” industry and its participants as a researcher and racing fan, a compelling mix for an academic title that opens with the invention of the totalizator and tries to impress on readers the importance of “understanding age, gender, class, race, and geography in broader social contexts.”
It might seem an odd pairing, but My Adventures with Your Money can easily be read alongside Kruse’s book as a tale of finding innovative — and not always legal — ways to use new technologies. Published last fall (making it the * in this round-up), T.D. Thornton’s history of con man George Graham Rice fits our cultural moment (and maybe this election season). A swindler, a grifter, a hustler who couldn’t stop hustling, Rice got his start selling tout sheets and manipulating the tote, then bounced in and out of prison for luring suckers into bad investments in the go-go days of 1920s Wall Street (he was also a “pioneer of sex appeal” in marketing). Rice preyed on the greedy and naive and relished it — if you like to root for charismatic anti-heroes (Walter White, Donald Trump), or if you’re fascinated by how such people entice dupes into their schemes, you’ll probably get a kick out of his story.
Posted by JC in Books on 04/05/2016 @ 9:10 am / Follow @railbird on Twitter
It was with sadness that I read on the New England HBPA website that trainer Mario DeStefano died at age 78 on Saturday, January 10. From his obituary:
Mario began his teaching career at LaSalle Academy in Providence followed by over thirty years as a History teacher, coach and athletic director in the Providence School System. He projected his love of wrestling through his coaching and refereeing in the RI Wrestling Community.
Mario’s love of horses was his greatest source of enjoyment. Since the 1960s he had been involved with thoroughbred racing in the New England area. As an avid horse Owner/Trainer he was well known in RI, at Suffolk Downs and Rockingham Park horse communities. He was a past president of the New England Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association.
Mario did not enjoy a reputation around the track as an easy person; I don’t think it’s speaking ill of the dead to say that he could be irascible and morose. But I knew Mario as a teacher, and as a teacher, he was generous and patient.
I met him during the 2004 Suffolk Downs meet, when I was a new racing fan and he had a chestnut gelding named Ascot Doll who I liked. I introduced myself to him in the grandstand one afternoon. “Come by the barn,” he said. I did, the next morning, and the next, and the next, and then he put me to work. The job was hotwalking and the pay was $200 for six days a week, plus lunch on race days. I thought this was a pretty good deal, because I knew almost nothing about horses and wanted to know more.
Mario started me slowly, walking the two quietest of his six horses. He spooled out responsibilities as I grew more comfortable in the barn. Working with Marco, the groom, I learned to mix feed, feel for heat, pick feet, and wrap legs. I learned how to rub a horse, and how to hold my hand against its flank so that I could feel a horse picking up its foot while I wasn’t looking, guarding against a kick. Mario was quick with corrections when necessary, and he was always clear and direct. He answered questions the same way.
He was also a careful observer of horses and humans. “Look at this,” he’d say to me, and point out a subtle sign of soreness in a horse, or a handler being rough. Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned from Mario was that the way to be with a horse was confident and calm, that fear and anger didn’t belong.
He was soft with his horses. Call Me Mr. Vain, a kind, classy gelding and the winningest horse of 2003, was then in Mario’s barn, recovering from a tendon injury. I remember a trainer once telling Mario that he treated Mr. Vain too much like a pet. And one morning, another trainer stopped by to yell that he had to get “rid” of one, because “he’s a rat.” Mario yelled back and chased the guy off. Then he took the so-called rat — Ascot Doll, nursing a bum ankle — out of his stall for his daily walk around the backstretch. My clearest memory of that summer is of the pair of them standing near the gap watching horses train in the rosy morning light, Ascot Doll lazily flicking his ears and tail, Mario’s hands dropped low, the shank hanging loosely from his fingers.
Posted by JC in Racing on 01/20/2016 @ 11:22 am / Tagged Ascot Doll, Mario DeStefano, RIP, Suffolk Downs / Follow @railbird on Twitter
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