Blind Luck
Thinking Ahead
Zipse at the Track picks up on the argument advanced earlier this month by Steeplestakes (via Equidaily), that Zenyatta has not done enough at this point in the year to be considered a Horse of the Year candidate. I suppose it’s a pleasantly diverting debate to have while we await the Breeders’ Cup, but it’s also kind of meaningless. After all, Zenyatta’s connections have made it known all along that her goal was a repeat win in the Breeders’ Cup Classic (which Zipse does acknowledge). They’re all in, and their strategy will probably pay off; unlike last year, this year’s Classic will decide who’s Horse of the Year.
It’s more interesting to me that Zenyatta will likely repeat as champion older female without having started against most of this year’s top distaffers. Of the 10 Ladies’ Classic contenders ranked by DRF (PDF), she’ll have met Rinterval (second in the Hirsch, entered in the Lady’s Secret) and Zardana. She won’t have raced against Life At Ten, Unrivaled Belle, or Persistently (entered in the Beldame) or Blind Luck and Havre de Grace (entered in the Cotillion). That’s nothing to hold against Zenyatta, who can only run against those entered against her, but it is a depressing comment on how rarely the best racehorses meet on track, as is Blind Luck shipping to Parx for a stakes restricted to 3-year-old fillies instead of Hollywood or Belmont to challenge her elders.
As Chris Rossi, aka o_crunk, commenting here and in a recent Thoroughbred Times Today piece, has pointed out: The game is getting watered down. Steven Crist lays the blame partly on slots-fueled purses.
Related: There’s a very civilized discussion about Zenyatta and Andrew Beyer’s recent column happening in this comment thread.
ESPN Is to Sports …
College football fans tuned into ESPN this Saturday will get a chance to see Zenyatta. As part of a Breeders’ Cup Challenge telecast running from 6:30 to 8:00 PM ET on ESPN Classic and ESPN360, ESPN will break in between games at 7:15 PM to air the Lady’s Secret Stakes from Oak Tree at Hollywood Park.
I can’t knock exposure, especially for a champion with a story fit for Oprah and a game that has such loyal fans, but I keep thinking about a comment by Ed on the Plonk post of last week: “it’s hard to believe that it was just 12 years ago that ESPN was still televising the Little Brown Jug LIVE.”
Well into the 1990s, you could say ESPN was a true sports network, with an eclectic line-up that included football, baseball, soccer, golf, bass fishing, and the X Games. If people played it, ESPN aired it. Changes came with ABC/Disney ownership, competition from other networks, and an ambitious expansion plan that rode the rise of cable and the web, turning ESPN into the TV-radio-digital-print behemoth it is now. There’s a downside to this dominance, though, a homogenizing of sport, an emphasis on the popular and lucrative.
Think of it this way: ESPN is to sports as Playboy was to sex.
Like Hugh Hefner’s groundbreaking men’s magazine, ESPN transformed an industry, becoming hugely influential to a generation of young men and radically reshaping their perceived interests. Along the way, it became less a celebration of all that is athletic than a platform for aggregating massive advertiser-friendly audiences. That means fewer small-market sports, whether hockey or horseracing, and more major league sports and specious “news” coverage. When all of sports was a niche, more sporting niches thrived. Gone mainstream, broadly appealing sports “narratives” gain prominence.
What that means for racing is that events such as the Breeders’ Cup need ESPN to reach the largest possible audience of sports fans, but ESPN has no need for horseracing — which is why on Saturday, Zenyatta will be the entertainment between football games, not the main attraction.
It’s not a BC Challenge race, so it won’t be appearing on any ESPN channel, but Blind Luck versus Havre de Grace in the Cotillion Stakes at Philadelphia Park Parx on Saturday looks like a must-watch race. It’ll be the third meeting between the two 3-year-old fillies. Stakes winner Awesome Maria, making her second start of the year, is also entered. The Cotillion is part of the second annual Lady Riders Challenge, a very cool, under-reported event.
That’s the Spirit
Mark Dedomenico, co-owner of Blind Luck, on the filly’s ambitious campaign:
“No one can say this horse won’t run anywhere; we’re not the kind to duck anybody…. We’re doing everything and going every place because this time we want the Eclipse Award.”
Tough Luck
That really was a hard-luck half-length loss for Gio Ponti in the Million:
Faster than the winner Debussy at the three latter points of call in the 10-furlong race, but it’s the final time (and the trip!) that matters …
Another for the so-close file: If not for Blind Luck’s nose in the Kentucky Oaks, Evening Jewel would be an all Grade 1 Omnisurface Star after taking the Del Mar Oaks by a half-length over American Oaks winner Harmonious. Instead, she dominates the 2+ITM chart. Not for long, I’d wager.
“It seems like we have the best 3-year-old filly, right now,” said trainer Jerry Hollendorfer after Blind Luck won the Alabama Stakes at Saratoga. “[But] I hate to make those kinds of assessments.” There’s no reason for him to feel reluctant, not when his late-running filly overcame an absurdly slow pace (:49.45 for the half, 1:14.81 for three-quarters) to take her third Grade 1 stakes victory of the year. That’s the right kind of tough luck:
Not So Blind
I knew I was in trouble with It’s Tea Time when her name kept surfacing in blog posts and tweets Saturday morning as a top Oaks pick. It was shades of Sweetnorthernsaint in the 2006 Kentucky Derby, watching the hype build. “It’s official: the first ‘blogger steam’ horse in history is It’s Tea Time,” remarked @HRFattheTrack. At 7-1, well down from her morning line odds of 15-1, the filly went into the gate as the third favorite.
Blind Luck, of course, was the favorite, and there was no doubt she was a deserving 6-5 at post time as she did her thing in the stretch, ranging up on the outside and nailing the win at wire by a nose over 13-1 Evening Jewel:
Final time for the race was 1:50.70 (chart), for which Blind Luck was given a Beyer speed figure of 94. The official teletimer photo:
It’s Tea Time? She finished ninth.
Earlier on the Churchill card, disappointment for HOTY fans: Rachel Alexandra lost her second start of the year, finishing a head behind 9-1 Unrivaled Belle in the LaTroienne Stakes, prompting Bill Finley — who must have had this piece already written, so quickly did it go up on the ESPN site — to opine,
The prudent course will probably soon become obvious to Asmussen and Jackson, and Rachel Alexandra will be retired. That sure seems like the right thing to do.
But Jess Jackson, in a post-race visit to the press box, said the 4-year-old filly appeared to come out of the race well and would remain in training:
(Paulick Report video of the surprise press conference: Part 1, Part 2.)
While Jackson’s statements may seem a little rushed, I can’t fault him for wanting to check any speculation about retirement; Rachel Alexandra deserves another start. To paraphrase Jay Hovdey, she’s not running badly, she’s just not winning, and there are plenty of races remaining in the year.
11:00 AM Addendum: A final time of 1:42.97 for the LaTroienne, a Beyer speed figure of 103 for both Unrivaled Belle and Rachel Alexandra.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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