Trainer John Sadler is hardly unknown. Steadily climbing the rankings over the past decade, he’s been among the top 10 conditioners nationally by earnings since 2008, and six weeks into this year, he’s number four, behind perennial leaders Asmussen, Baffert, and Pletcher. On opening day at Santa Anita, he won three graded stakes. This past weekend, he won three of the four graded stakes run at the track — the Strub Stakes with Twirling Candy (“possesses an undeniable brilliance,” gushed Mike Watchmaker), the Las Virgenes with Zazu (Green but Game’s expert pick and newest crush), and the San Antonio Handicap with Gladding. With 4-year-old stakes winners Switch and Sidney’s Candy also in his barn, the Santa Anita press office calculates that he has “serious contenders … in no less than six of racing’s divisions.” Not bad. While Sadler isn’t well stocked in racing’s glamour division — his most promising 3-year-old male so far this winter is Runflatout, a debut maiden winner — with three of the best older horses in training, he seems poised to have the kind of breakout year that leads to an Eclipse Award.
Hold off on adding Cal Nation to your Kentucky Derby top 10:
“Cal Nation came out of his race well,” said Pletcher of the 3-year-old Distorted Humor colt who was impressive in breaking his maiden at first asking in Saturday’s eighth race [at Gulfstream]. “It’s a little late [for him to get onto the Kentucky Derby trail]. We’d have to make up a lot of time. I think we’ll just take the conservative route with him.”
Kentucky Derby and Oaks prep schedules updated: Beyer speed figures of 88 for Toby’s Corner in the Whirlaway and Zazu in the Las Virgenes.
Brad Free was out with an interesting post on Santa Anita’s new dirt surface over the weekend: “No one wants to knock the surface. Not publicly, at least. But behind the scenes, many are frustrated.” For whatever reason, the track composition is not as as expected; more sand is to be added. Via Derby List comes this report of bruising clods being thrown up by the dirt: “I had the misfortune of being behind one horse while working a set 2 mornings ago …
2/9/11 Addendum: Sadler tells Jay Privman that Runflatout is possible for the San Vicente Stakes on February 20. “I want to give him a chance to get to the Kentucky Derby, but I want to be smart, too, about how we go at it.”
Posted by JC in Racing on 02/07/2011 @ 9:05 am / Tagged Cal Nation, California, Derby Prospects, John Sadler, Rankings, Santa Anita, Track Surfaces, Trainers / Follow @railbird on Twitter
TD Thornton on why he wrote “Not by a Long Shot”:
I read a lot of great books about the sport’s champions and iconic figures, but after awhile, it started to dawn on me that very few of those books spoke of the racetrack as I knew it — minimum-wage stable hands busting ice out of frozen water buckets, jockeys who starve themselves to make riding weight, fragile, beautiful horses with immeasurable tenacity. All of these elements keep the industry humming along in unheralded fashion so the highest echelon of the game can bask in the spotlight, yet these people and horses never seem to have a voice. I wanted to give them one.
Jaimy Gordon on her motivation for “Lord of Misrule”:
Of course, I read “Horse Heaven,’’ Jane Smiley’s novel. But the owners in “Horse Heaven’’ are respectable, upper-middle-class people, not like people I used to know on the racetrack.
I hoped I might write a book like Leonard Gardner’s “Fat City.†To me, that’s the best novel about American boxing, and yet it’s about boxing at its absolute bottom end, around Stockton, Calif. That’s what I wanted to do — write a book about horse racing at its low end, in an era considerably before the present moment, and see if there wasn’t an open niche for that.
Such similar urges to storytelling.
Posted by JC in Readings on 02/06/2011 @ 4:00 pm / Tagged Books, Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule, Nonfiction, Not by a Long Shot, Novels, TD Thornton / Follow @railbird on Twitter
New England HBPA lawyer Frank Frisoli told Paul Daley on Thursday that other horsemen’s groups might pull simulcasting signals from Suffolk Downs “out of solidarity” with the Massachusetts group, which is negotiating with the track over 2011 race dates, purses, and the simulcasting revenue split. Lynne Snierson reports that the Ohio and Florida horsemen have now done so:
On Jan. 29, the New England horsemen withdrew their consent for races from the New York Racing Association to be simulcast in Massachusetts and now races from Beulah Park are no longer available. As of tomorrow (Sunday, Feb. 6), races from Tampa Bay Downs will not be available and Gulfstream Park must stop sending its signal on Monday. Under Massachusetts statute, Advance Deposit Wagering account holders in the state are also prohibited from betting those tracks through TVG, Twin Spires, XpressBet …
Unbelievable. Unsurprisingly, there’s not a word in Snierson’s piece from the NEHBPA acknowledging, much less apologizing for, the affect blocking the feeds has on Massachusetts horseplayers. I would complain about how bettors — the people who fund much of the purse account at the center of this fight — are the only ones getting hurt at this point, but Suffolk kicked the backstretch assistance center, the Eighth Pole, off its grounds, and not being able to play the Whirlaway at Aqueduct this afternoon really pales in comparison to being shuttled to a homeless shelter for medical treatment and social services.
So, the situation is ugly, and complicated, and seems likely to become more so before anything is settled. I heard a few days ago that there were horsemen unhappy with the NEHBPA’s handling of the negotiations, none willing to talk even anonymously, which Snierson confirms, and a group calling itself the Thoroughbred Horsemen of Massachusetts Association appeared on Facebook at this URL before disappearing early Saturday. [2/6/11, 4:00 PM Update: The group’s page has returned. “We are a newly formed organization reaching out to the horsemen of Massachusetts who race regularly at Suffolk Downs,” reads its description. “If you feel that the New England HBPA is misrepresenting Massachusetts horsemen in their quest to sign a purse agreement for the Suffolk Downs 2011 race meet, then we want to hear from you!”]
Meanwhile, the track is apparently planning for a meet beginning in May. “I hope there is room for an agreement [with the NEHBPA],” Suffolk COO Chip Tuttle told Snierson. “But if not, we intend to run a race meet in 2011 regardless.” This makes about as much sense as the NEHBPA’s earlier claims of seeking an alternate venue for live racing. There’s nowhere else to race in Massachusetts, and there’s no one else who wants to race in Massachusetts.
(And if there is? Are these horsemen wanted at Suffolk? There have been years, not recent, in which stalls have been given to unsavory trainers banned from other jurisdictions for the purpose of bolstering the local horse population. Even at the higher purse structure under discussion, the average daily purses will still be lower than any other track on the East Coast. Rogues will apply.)
But I also hope agreement is possible. This just isn’t the way for racing at the last thoroughbred racetrack in New England to end. Suffolk posted on its website this morning a dispute fact sheet (PDF), and a copy of the track’s response letter to the NEHBPA when negotiations initially broke down last month (PDF). A few things jumped out on reading, not least:
The letter also omits other elements of the proposal that further demonstrate SRR’s good faith negotiations. These include a willingness to spread the racing days over a 23- to 26-week meet and to keep the barn area open from late April until at least early November, which you have conveyed is important to your members but creates considerable extra expense for SSR. The SSR proposal also would have committed SSR to adding racing days to the season in the event that the handle generated at Suffolk Downs approaches the level it was at last year.
Suffolk is proposing a shortened meet, and is offering to spread out race dates and keep the barn area open for almost seven months. That doesn’t just sound like good faith, it sounds like a perfectly viable solution, considering the current state of the racing industry and the never-ending, ever-surprising expanded gaming maneuvering on Beacon Hill. The NEHBPA wants the state-mandated minimum 100 days and total purses of $10.6 million, but there’s just no market for that much Massachusetts racing, and there’s no money to support that much Massachusetts racing without slots.
“Even running for a little bit of money is better than no racing and no money,” horseman Charlie Assimakopolous told Snierson. That’s the bottom line.
Posted by JC in Industry on 02/05/2011 @ 8:48 pm / Tagged #suffolkdispute2011, Massachusetts, Negotiations, NEHBPA, New England, Simulcasting, Suffolk Downs / Follow @railbird on Twitter
