Hello!
Congratulations to Dana and Adam on the launch of Hello Race Fans, a new kind of fan education site for racing. I’m a contributor, but even if I weren’t, I’d recommend checking out the Letter to a New Horseplayer collection (featuring several top turf writers and bloggers) or the first edition of the HRF Index.
Links for 2010-03-30
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"Crist's contention the World Cup outcome was a 'crapshoot' is ludicrous on its face. The top three finishers in the race had been separated by one and one-quarter lengths in the primary prep for the race, the March 4 Maktoum Challenge, over the same Meydan course at the same distance as the World Cup. Fourth-place finisher Gio Ponti was about one and one-quarter lengths behind the World Cup winner, a similar margin to his one length loss to Zenyatta in the Breeders' Cup Classic."
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"To have racing cease at what remains the most important racing circuit in North America seems unimaginable, but it's not. In New York, where the politicians are beyond contempt and the off-track betting system is a bad joke, it can happen. What a shame."
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"What’s most exciting is that this fundamental transformation — cloud + social + iPad — will inspire a new generation of wildly innovative new apps that will change entire industries."
Links for 2010-03-19
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“Rachel was clearly not ready to run…. Yet there’s no reason she can’t return to where she was last year. She just rounded into shape too slowly for this race. I think if they meet it will be in the Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1), but if someone wants to offer $5-million before then Rachel could be ready for a top effort in June after she gets in one more race.â€
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"The organization is set on determining a long-term schedule despite the uncertainty surrounding the racing industry, both on the national stage, where handle and bloodstock prices have plummeted over the last two years, and on the circuits Breeders' Cup typically targets. As a result, Breeders' Cup has limited options, and none appears ideal."
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"I wonder whether, after this spectacular World Cup, the true tradition of horse racing in Dubai — the family tradition — will endure."
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"I could have been a respected editor instead of a huge nerd. But all the editing in the world can't compare to building little websites and mangling text and writing things and messing around in spreadsheets and figuring out what's wrong with comments. I wake up thinking about how all the pieces fit together and I want to do more of it and with lots of people."
Links for 2010-03-11
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"Speaking on condition of anonymity, highly placed industry sources are telling HRI there is no way Monmouth Park can reasonably expect to double its handle, something it would need to do to remain viable, given a purse structure that will distribute an average $1-million daily." As long as New Jersey is experimenting, why not court bettors as aggressively as connections? Slash takeout, offer free data, target whales.
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A bit of candor: "If this is the death for the small horsemen, it’s because he doesn’t have the kind of horse that America wants to bet on."
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"The goal is simple: to replicate the company's smashing success in the financial world, where the $1,500-a-month Bloomberg terminals are in many ways the lifeblood of the industry, into the sports world. Bloomberg is starting with baseball. The company has just launched its fantasy product, which costs $31.95 for the year." Watching with interest …
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More details from the December 2009 deal announcement: "For the MLBAM-Bloomberg product being sold to MLB teams, Bloomberg will take MLBAM’s real-time statistical feed from every game, as well as location-based data already being developed in partnership with Sportvision, and apply an almost limitless amount of analytical tools." Neat! Visuals (via).
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"Here’s my point: businesses don’t get to pick the timetable for when their preferred model takes a permanent dirt nap. It’s insane to me that these businesses’ fans see this so much more clearly than their actual stakeholders do. The fans want desperately to see these places stay alive, and many … pay tons of actual cash … to support that."
Links for 2010-03-05
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"Quite why the Emir was so generous is unclear, but some say that as the ruler of a small state surrounded by big and powerful neighbours, he was an admirer of the plucky Falklanders and their refusal to be cowed by Argentina." The Sheikh and a sire named Thyer.
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How the physical and digital will coexist going forward. "Goodbye, disposable books. Hello, new canvases."
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"I'd start with the will to veracity, also known as truthtelling. Truthtelling even when it hurts or causes problems for your friends. Real journalists tell us what happened because it actually happened that way, and not some other way. All forms of legitimacy derive from this one."
About
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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