JC / Railbird

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Feeling Fresh

Cloud Computing earned a career-best Beyer speed figure of 102 for winning the Preakness Stakes by a head over Classic Empire, news delivered to Jay Privman via a text from Andrew Beyer. The colt was assigned a TimeformUS speed figure of 122. “Preakness is not an easy figure to make,” tweeted TFUS figuremaker Craig Milkowski. “Track was changing and route before it (Sir Barton) had slow pace that probably affected time.”

The pace was set by Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming and Classic Empire, who broke side by side from the gate and then ran the first six furlongs together, matching strides through the first quarter in :23.16, the half in :46.81, and three-quarters in 1:11. The race was over for Always Dreaming before the quarter pole, as he ceded the lead to Classic Empire on the turn into the stretch, who opened up by three lengths on the rest of the field.

Just as it looked as though last year’s juvenile champion and jockey Julien Leparoux had the win, Cloud Computing struck — after stalking the top two with a trip as untroubled as anyone could wish for, jockey Javier Castellano and his mount ran down Classic Empire in the final sixteenth. No excuses for the finish, said Leparoux after the Preakness:

“We had a good trip. We got the trip we wanted, outside Always Dreaming. The only thing is, Always Dreaming backed out of the race early, so I got to the lead early, maybe too early. I got to the lead early, and the winner just came at us at the end.”

It was a valiant effort for the runner-up, considering the way the race unfolded from the start. Conquest Mo Money, widely assumed a likely factor in the early pace, was no factor at all, running in fifth and finishing seventh, and Leparoux had a mission aboard the fourth-place Kentucky Derby finisher:

“Second doesn’t mean anything,” the trainer of Classic Empire, Mark Casse, told Leparoux in the paddock before the race. “Let’s go and try to win this thing.”

The winner, making just his fourth career start, skipped the Derby and entered the Preakness with six weeks rest following a third-place finish in the Wood Memorial. That was the plan, said trainer Chad Brown:

“Certainly I’m not going to dispute the fact that I brought in a fresh horse as part of our strategy,” said Brown, last year’s Eclipse Award-winning trainer, who scored his first ever win in a Triple Crown race. “Our horse is very talented, too. Classic Empire and Always Dreaming are two outstanding horses, and our strategy was, if we are ever going to beat them let’s take them on two weeks’ rest when we have six (weeks), and it worked.”

“I have no regrets about missing the Derby,” Cloud Computing’s co-owner Seth Klarman told Bob Ehalt after the Preakness:

“I think possibly some of the reason that we won today was because we were patient and didn’t throw an inexperienced horse against a 20-horse field in the Derby on a very difficult track.”

Being fresh was “clearly a huge advantage,” Bill Finley concludes in his recap:

… a horse that had never won a stakes race and was coming off a modest performance in the Wood Memorial beat a Kentucky Derby winner and the 2-year-old champion in the Preakness. He was fresh. They weren’t. Case closed.

As for the Wood — downgraded to a Grade 2 for its lack of impact in recent years as Derby prep — Cloud Computing’s finish was a better-than-it-looked performance, writes Mike Watchmaker:

When Cloud Computing finished third in the Wood Memorial in his start before the Preakness, he was the victim of a passive ride that found him much farther off the early pace than he should have been. And this approach in the Wood Memorial was egregiously ill-timed because it occurred on a day when the main track at Aqueduct was profoundly biased toward speed horses. In other words, Cloud Computing’s third-place finish in the Wood wasn’t even close to a true representation of his ability. It was actually a good effort considering how he was so up against the bias.

Credit to NYRA handicapper Andy Serling, who touted Cloud Computing before the Preakness, tweeting:

“For those wondering who can beat Always Dreaming in the Preakness, I have two words for you…..Cloud Computing.”

Final time for the Preakness was 1:55.98. Cloud Computing, the sixth-favorite at 13-1, paid $28.80 to win. Here’s the chart (PDF). Watch the replay:

Get a closer look at key moments with the Blood-Horse race sequence gallery.

It sounds as though Cloud Computing, back in his stall at Belmont Park before noon on Sunday, may pass on the Belmont Stakes in three weeks. Brown was non-committal about the prospect on Saturday night:

“We haven’t ruled it out,” Brown said. “We’re just going to evaluate the horse this week and probably by next weekend we may have a decision.”

Always Dreaming finished eighth as the 6-5 post-time favorite. It had to hurt:

A win was all [trainer Todd] Pletcher wanted on Saturday.

He paced in front of his Kentucky Derby winner’s No. 40 stall on Saturday evening, about an hour before the race, chatting on his cell phone as though it was just another day at the office.

He was anxious, he said, but not driven by his highly publicized winless record at the Preakness Stakes. Always Dreaming was only the ninth horse Pletcher had ever raced in the Preakness, and only the second in the past five years.

“I want to win it today,” he said.

Tim Layden also caught up with Pletcher before the Preakness:

“He’s ready,” Pletcher said, gripping a rolled-up program in his right fist. “He’s really ready.”

It wasn’t to be, although the trainer gave the appearance of taking the results about as well as anyone could:

Pletcher was a genuine stand-up guy Saturday, giving a clinic on how to conduct yourself when things don’t go your way by answering rapid-fire questions without the slightest hint of irritation.

“We didn’t have an excuse,” he said:

“We were in the position we expected to be and I think the turnaround was a little too quick. He ran so hard in the Derby and today just wasn’t his day.

“He didn’t seem to relish the track, but I don’t really think that was it. It was just that he put so much into the Derby that it wasn’t meant to be.”

“I was a little concerned coming by the wire the first time. He was there, but it wasn’t like he was dragging Johnny there, actually. It felt like he was on a loose rein by the time they turned up the backside, That’s kind of what we anticipated Classic Empire would do, take it to us, but he just didn’t have that reserve today.”

Jockey John Velazquez kept his post-race quotes brief:

“He just got beat. I didn’t have it. That’s it. I knew I was in trouble on the backstretch when the other horse got to him, almost head to head, and engaged him. I knew I didn’t have it. That’s horse racing.”

More Preakness recaps: Cloud Computing pulls off upset in 142nd Preakness (Baltimore Sun), Cloud Computing wears down Classic Empire in Preakness (Blood-Horse), Cloud Computing edges Classic Empire in Preakness Stakes; Always Dreaming fades (Daily Racing Form), Cloud Computing edges Classic Empire to win Preakness at Pimlico (Washington Post).

Posted in Racing on May 21, 2017 / Tagged Always Dreaming, Classic Empire, Cloud Computing, Preakness Stakes, Triple Crown

For the Patron

More details from Thursday’s New England HBPA horse park presentation:

Brad Boaz, of the Lexington, Kentucky-based architectural and engineering firm CMW, gave an overview of the “Massachusetts Horse Park” master plan, as well as presented some hard numbers, during a press conference Thursday in Boston.

“Keeping the horse in mind is paramount, but also for the patron as well,” Mr. Boaz said. “We want to keep them coming back.”

The horse park, proposed by the New England Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, would be at least 200 acres and feature a horseracing complex, an “agri-tourism village” and equestrian venues …

“We don’t feel like it’s this massive structure. It’s very quaint. It’s very inviting,” Mr. Boaz said. “What we’re trying to do is take little features from some of our most favorite tracks.”

Saratoga was apparently cited as a model.

Posted in Racing on May 20, 2017 / Tagged Horse Park, Massachusetts, NEHBPA, New England, Race Horse Development Fund

The Bottom Line

The State House News Service reported on Tuesday that a section of the 2018 budget proposal in the Massachusetts state senate would sweep $15 million from the Race Horse Development Fund into the state general fund:

“It’s just been sitting there,” Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Karen Spilka said of the Race Horse Development Fund money Tuesday. “That’s where we give some of the increases to (the Department of Environmental Protection) and (the Department of Conservation and Recreation). We use it for conservation and recreation, consistent with the original purpose.”

Spilka added on Wednesday:

“Much of the fund’s assets have remained unused, and given the state’s tight fiscal situation, we direct the money to protect and enhance our natural resources for the benefit of residents across Massachusetts.”

This development is no surprise. With Thoroughbred racing scheduled for six days this year and the recent sale of Suffolk Downs putting a likely end to any racing after 2018, there’s a growing pool of money in the RHDF with nowhere to go. The fund, collecting 9% of the slots revenue at Plainridge, had a balance of approximately $15.6 million through April. Last month, a Boston Globe editorial called for a new mission for the RHDF millions:

When the casino law was passed, allies of the racing industry tried to spin the fund as something other than a special-interest giveaway by claiming it served the broader public interest in preserving open space on horse farms.

If preservation is really Beacon Hill’s concern, though, it would make more sense to follow the suggestion of State Representative Bradley H. Jones, a Republican from North Reading, who last year proposed redirecting some of the horse racing money into community preservation funding for municipalities. Community Preservation Act money can be used for open space, affordable housing, and historic preservation; local dollars are supposed to be matched with state money, but the state’s contribution has been declining in recent years and will be stretched even thinner now that Boston voted to join the program …

Jones’s proposal would be a step in the right direction, but the state’s ultimate goal should be to wean horse racing off state support completely. The collapse of horse racing has inflicted undeniable pain on many workers in Massachusetts, and they deserve the Commonwealth’s full support making a transition to more viable jobs. But simply paying them to run horses in front of ever-shrinking crowds — at Suffolk Downs, in New York, or anywhere else — is not a long-term economic policy.

In 2016, WBUR and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting took a closer look at the RHDF and its (lack of) effect on Massachusetts Thoroughbred racing and breeding, finding it wanting:

A review of the fund’s work by The Eye and WBUR public radio has found scant gains in breeding race horses, a schedule of racing that continues to be limited, and growing infighting among industry factions that has tried the patience of the fund’s overseers.

And I wrote in 2014 that the legislature would come for the RHDF.

Much like last year’s revised split that increased standardbreds’ share of the RHDF from 25% to 55% — Plainridge is running 125 days with average daily purses of $60K and a $250,000 stakes race in 2017 thanks to the boost — the proposed appropriation in the 2018 budget bill is being sold as a temporary way to put the fund to use — it’s for one fiscal year only — except that legislators, whether or not the budget passes as currently written, aren’t likely to forget that the RHDF money is there. The fund will become an even more tempting target for raids when the Springfield MGM casino opens in 2018 and a percent of its revenue begins to swell the RHDF.

New England HBPA executives promise to fight the proposed appropriation:

The New England Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, for example, makes the case that the money in the fund was intended to promote horse racing. What better way to promote horse racing than to promote a horse park with a track, officials said.

“When we look at that money in the Horse Race Development Fund, we see 1,000 jobs and the preservation of open space,” said Paul Umbrello, executive director of the horsemen’s association. “We will fight the transfer.”

The NEHBPA continues to push their horse park plan; they propose to build a new racetrack and equestrian center in Spencer, a small town in central Massachusetts that’s off the Mass Pike but more than an hour from Boston. It’s a longshot. The Boston Herald blasted the plan a few weeks ago:

Now, silly us for raising a question like this, but if Suffolk Downs couldn’t make a go of thoroughbred racing a stone’s throw from downtown Boston, why on earth would the state want to invest its money in such a venture, say in maybe a town like Spencer?

It was, after all, Sen. Anne Gobi (D-Spencer) who filed a bill to divert money from the fund to a horse race park, while acknowledging that the racing industry is “on life support.”

“This is an opportunity to support the entire industry,” she added. “We have to do something because it’s going and once it’s gone it’s not coming back.”

And calling horse racing an “industry” does not make it so.

“We just want to say we want to take X percentage of that fund to build and support, as a bridge gap, the horse park,” Umbrello said. “Once we’re up and running it’s going to be self-sufficient.”

Like we’ve never heard that one before!

Until lawmakers find a better use for the racing fund it will continue to attract nutty schemes like this one.

(My initial reaction to the NEHBPA plan when it was laid out last summer.)

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission declined to comment earlier this week, but chairman Stephen Crosby told the Globe last month that while:

he supported legislation that would reform the horse racing industry and give it a better chance of success in Massachusetts … taking away the fund would be the “death knell” for racing in the Commonwealth.

The death knell is sounding — the obstacles to the NEHBPA horse park are substantial, Brockton is not viable, and the state of the larger racing industry is against new construction or a new track operator entering Massachusetts.

8:00 PM Addendum: The NEHBPA pitched the horse park to reporters in an event this afternoon, Bruce Mohl reports in CommonWealth:

Brian Hickey, the association’s lobbyist and the host of Thursday’s presentation, said the group would like to see the law changed so the money in the Horse Race Development Fund could be used to directly support the state’s horse-racing industry. He estimated a couple hundred thousand dollars would be needed for the horse park feasibility study, and indicated more of the money would be needed if the horse park itself moves forward. He said revenues from simulcasting races from around the country could also be used to support the park.

More to come …

Posted in Racing on May 18, 2017 / Tagged Massachusetts, NEHBPA, New England, Race Horse Development Fund, Suffolk Downs