Big Brown to race Belmont Stakes backwards
ELMONT, NY - In light of Big Brown's dominance in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association has ruled that the undefeated horse will have to race the upcoming Belmont Stakes running backwards.
The decision to make Big Brown run in reverse was approved by the New York Racing Association, which oversees operations at Belmont Park. Surprisingly, Big Brown's trainer, Rick Dutrow, has no objections to making his colt run backwards.
"It doesn't bother me at all," he said. "I know he's still going to win the race, even if he does run ass-first. They can blindfold him too, if they want. We'd still take home the Triple Crown. Can you say horse of destiny? Big Brown can - he's like Mr. Ed, but faster."
The NTRA made the decision at a routine planning meeting earlier in the week, and racing insiders say it was a spur-of-the-moment decision that had not been on the docket for racing officials until minutes before the meeting began. The ruling is a first for horse racing, though Olympic organizers did consider forcing Carl Lewis to run backwards for the 100 meters in the 1988 Seoul games.
A spokesman for the NTRA told SSNN that Big Brown's consistent dominance made the organization worry that a standard race would not draw the attention they deem appropriate for a potential Triple Crown winner, not to mention scare away potential Belmont entrants that don't want to look bad in comparison. The prevailing opinion was that making Big Brown run the race backwards will spruce up the competition and allow the other horses to have a chance.
There has been a nasty backlash, however, from the horse racing community - not, as one might expect, from racing purists who are turned off by the gimmicky nature of the ruling. Rather, it is widely thought that the sport - in light of the recent high-profile euthanasia of Barbaro and Eight Belles - needs the good publicity that would come with a Triple Crown winner.
The NTRA disputes that fact.
"If this race is run regularly, where's the drama? What's the point? We might as well just hand the trophy over to Big Brown and tack him onto the list after Affirmed," said NTRA spokesman Harry Bliss. "I mean, could the first Triple Crown winner in thirty years be any more anticlimactic than that?
"We want the best drama possible -not only to accommodate racing fans, but the television network as well. And having Big Brown backpedaling around the track gives us that, in spades."
(c) SeriousSportsNewsNetwork.com. All Rights Reserved
Horse racing is beauty, tragedy
This time, it happened off-camera, and post-race.
We were spared the footage of Eight Belles' catastrophic injury in Saturday's Kentucky Derby and immediate euthanasia, but no matter. If you saw the 2006 Preakness, the image probably still haunts you: of Barbaro, just out of the gate, falling away from the thundering pack that he was favored to beat, limping off on three legs as his shattered fourth one dangled in the air.
We might not have seen Eight Belles collapsing - after finishing a surprising second, the filly broke both her front legs - but it's becoming impossible not to see the tragic toll underneath the thrill of horse racing.
The one time I saw a racehorse up close was a couple years ago at Rendez-Vous Farm in Parkton, almost to the Pennsylvania line. I was struck by both his magnificence and his fragility, the way his sleek yet massive body was carried atop improbably delicate legs.
"Ah, I knew his grandfather as a yearling," the farm's owner, Debbie Frank, told me that day as she fondly stroked the horse's glowing brown coat.
The horse was a grandson of the great Seattle Slew, the 1977 Triple Crown winner that was trained in nearby Monkton, and had raced as well, until he developed bone chips in both front knees. While his surgeon - "the same doc who operated on Barbaro," Frank said - thought he could race again, the horse's owner brought him instead to Frank, telling her, "I just want him to be a horse for a change."
He came to the right place. Frank's farm is home to Equine Rescue and Rehabilitation Inc., a nonprofit she started 14 years ago to take in injured, damaged or simply aged horses. Frank and her volunteers nurse them to health, retrain them for "second careers," perhaps to be ridden on trails or as companion horses, and then try to arrange adoptions. (You have to live within a 150-mile radius of the farm so ERRI can perform regular inspections and make sure you haven't turned around and sold the horse at auction.)
She gets all sorts of horses - over the years, they've included a Chincoteague pony, a former jousting champion, one-time show horses and animals whose owners have divorced, moved to nursing homes, or just couldn't handle their expensive upkeep any more.
And then there are the racehorses, those that have suffered injuries that are neither life-threatening nor attention-getting in the way of a Barbaro or an Eight Belle.
Working at this stage of a horse's life, it's perhaps no surprise that Frank doesn't tune in to the high-stakes races like the Derby or Preakness.
"I can't watch," Frank said. "They run them to death."
Like others in the wake of the latest high-profile racehorse death, Frank faults the way the animals are bred, raced and pushed to or beyond their limits; she doesn't believe, for example, that horses should be raced before their third year.
There have always been detractors to horse racing - the animal-rights group PETA, for example, quickly jumped on Eight Belles' death to highlight its long-running call for reforms, such as a switch to what some consider the safer synthetic tracks. But because of Barbaro and now Eight Belles, even those of us who are casual viewers, who only pay attention when we have a mint julep in our hands or when the Triple Crown show comes to our own Pimlico, can no longer ignore the sport's tragic toll.
The high-profile injuries are just the tip of the iceberg - a horse trained by Michael Martz, who was also Barbaro's trainer, broke a leg at another race at Churchill Downs leading up to the Derby, an incident that drew little widespread attention until Eight Belles' fatal breakdown.
Also receiving renewed attention was a study by a veterinarian named Mary Scollay, who found there are 2.03 deaths of horses per 1,000 starts on traditional dirt tracks, versus 1.47 fatalities per 1,000 starts on synthetic fields. The study comes with the usual caveats - it was based on a small sample, it's too early to draw conclusions about the relative merits of the two tracks, etc. - and yet who knew there were that many deaths at all? A simple Web search will reveal many, horrible ones - horses' leg bones snapping through the skin, a filly that suffered a heart attack in the home stretch and died.
The blur of the horses and the jockeys' silks, the all-too-rare opportunity to don a lavish hat, the roses or the black-eyed Susans at the finish line - horse racing at its height is a sport of immense beauty. But perhaps it is a terrible beauty.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Baltimore Sun
Kentucky Derby favorite Big Brown draws outside post
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AFP) - Big Brown drew the outside post and was installed as he early favorite on Wednesday for the Kentucky Derby, first jewel in US flat racing's Triple Crown.
Undefeated in all three of his career starts, the Richard Dutrow jnr-trained Big Brown will break from the far 20th slot with Kent Desormeaux aboard in Saturday's 134th running of the two million-dollar 1 1/4-mile race.
Although the only other horse to win from post 20 was Clyde Van Dusen in 1929, Big Brown was priced at 3-1.
"I figure we're happy enough with our draw," Dutrow said. "We have a pretty quick horse out of the gate. He could just pop right out of there and get good position and try to keep it."
Big Brown enters the first of the three Triple Crown races - which continue with the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes - with an impressive resume.
He has won his three career races by a combined 29 lengths.
In his latest race, Big Brown proved starting from the outside 12th post was no obstacle as he roared to a five-length victory in the Florida Derby on March 29.
No horse from the 11th or 12th post had won a 1 1/8-mile race since the Gulfstream track was reconfigured four years ago.
The second choice at 4-1 is Colonel John, who is coming off a win in the Santa Anita Derby in California.
He will leave from the 10th post under Corey Nakatani for trainer Eoin Harty.
Trying to end an 0-for-19 streak of Derby futility, four-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Todd Pletcher saddles two entries in Monba (15-1) and Cowboy Cal (20-1).
Last year, Pletcher saddled five entries but again failed to hit the board.
Also entered are Pyro (6-1), filly Eight Belles (15-1), Z Fortune (15-1), Tale of Ekati (15-1), Gayego (15-1), Visionaire (20-1), Bob Black Jack (20-1), Denis of Cork (20-1), Cool Coal Man (20-1), Recapturetheglory (20-1), Court Vision (20-1), Smooth Air (20-1), Adriano (30-1) and Big Truck (50-1).
Copyright (c) 2008 AFP. All rights reserved
Horses in Kentucky Derby will be closely monitored for drugs
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -When 20 of the best 3-year-old horses line up for this year's Kentucky Derby, they will be among the most closely monitored athletes on the planet.
From state trooper bodyguards watching their every move to a probable drug test in the days before the race - as well as a visit to the testing barn for the top four finishers and a randomly selected also-ran afterward - the entrants will spend four days under the sort of scrutiny that would make Barry Bonds blanche.
The attention is part of a growing initiative to crack down on the use of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, an effort that finally appears to be gaining momentum in an industry usually reluctant to change.
Last year for the first time, all 20 Derby horses were subjected to - and passed - a surprise drug test two days before the race. Kentucky Horse Racing Authority executive director Lisa Underwood said trainers should be "ready for anything'' when it comes to testing this year.
Well, almost anything. The Derby horses will not be tested for steroids, but that might be about to change due to mounting pressure from forces both inside and outside the industry for racing to develop stricter drug regulations.
Rick Arthur, the equine medical director for the California Horse Racing Board, pointed to an anonymous survey in which a series of samples from one U.S. racing jurisdiction was sent to an overseas lab for testing. The survey revealed 60 percent of the horses sampled had been administered anabolic steroids close to their racing date.
"Everybody has turned a blind eye to it,'' Arthur said. "There's a general perception of a permissive medication approach to U.S. racing that many people, myself being one of them, think needs to be re-evaluated.''
Arthur isn't saying the horses who make their way from paddock to post for the Derby are juiced. The most successful 3-year-olds on the Derby trail are tested several times along the road to Churchill Downs.
"I'm absolutely confident those (Derby) horses are clean by the standards in Kentucky when the gate opens,'' Arthur said. "But the standards are different in Maryland. They're different in New York and therein lies the problem. You're running three legs of the Triple Crown under three different sets of rules. Then when they come to California for the Breeders' Cup, there'll be another set of rules.''
The Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, founded in 2003, is trying to address the discrepancies. The RMTC wants to create uniform medication and drug testing rules nationwide.
Portions of the model rules already have been adopted in several states, including California. Kentucky is among the states expected to take similar steps by the end of the year. When the rules actually go on the books varies because of the different rule-making processes within each state.
"It's important for trainers and owners to know that the rules are going to be the same no matter where they go,'' Underwood said.
Maybe, but don't expect racing to be steroid free. The model rules put forth by the RMTC allow vets to administer one of four anabolic steroids considered therapeutic in nature, though the horses won't be allowed to race for at least 30 days after receiving the dosage.
Horses whose steroid levels test above the legal threshold upon their return to the track will have their performance vacated, with the trainer being fined a minimum of $500 and the owner required to return the purse for a first offense. Subsequent violations would result in stricter penalties under the guidelines put forth by the RMTC, though states are free to adjust the penalties as they see fit.
"What we don't want are horses competing under the influence of anabolic steroids,'' RMTC executive director Scot Waterman said. "We don't want any horses receiving any benefit while they're running the race.''
Waterman said the 30-day waiting period is enough time for any performance-enhancing effect "to be long gone'' by the time the horse races again, and defends the diversity of the testing, which looks for everything from stimulants to depressants to narcotics.
"In racing we test for actually a wider variety of drugs than most other major league sports,'' Waterman said. "Most human athletics take a narrow field of drugs. We cast a very wide net in racing.''
While adopting a uniform testing and penalty standard, creating more cost-effective and accurate tests and the possible centralization of testing centers could go a long way toward better regulating drugs, it might not be enough.
U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), frustrated by what he felt was lack of progress, asked National Thoroughbred Racing Association CEO Alex Waldrop during a congressional hearing in February if it was "time to call the federal cavalry and send it chasing into your stables with guns blazing to clean up the sport of horse racing?''
Waldrop demurred, and repeatedly has praised states for being proactive in adopting the model rules. Yet the problem goes beyond more comprehensive testing.
Trainer Nick Zito likely will have two horses in next Saturday's Derby, and he'd like to see a more aggressive approach by increasing security at race tracks.
"Until the security gets better, I think the drug testing is a good thing, but it's not the answer,'' he said.
It's a problem the Kentucky racing board has tried to address. Trainer Patrick Biancone was suspended for a year last October when officials found prohibited items, including cobra venom, in a search of his barn at Keeneland in Lexington.
The inspection of Biancone's barn was ordered by Underwood, but such inspections are rarely done due to a lack of resources.
"I wish we had more investigators,'' she said.
There will be no such problems at the Derby, where the horses will be placed on 24-hour surveillance from the time they are officially entered in the race Wednesday until they reach the paddock at Churchill Downs on Saturday.
It's all done to ensure a drug- and controversy-free day when the rest of the sports world stops and all eyes turn to the 2 biggest minutes in racing. Industry officials know fans won't make their way to the betting window if they're wondering who's juiced and who isn't.
"We do have a sport that is paid for by the fan who is placing the wager and those fans need to be confident that what they see is what they get, that (the trainers) are abiding by the rules,'' Arthur said.
(c) 2008 The Ledger. All Rights Reserved.
Recapturetheglory leads every step
STICKNEY, Ill. - The last several months have not been the smoothest for jockey E. T. Baird. After a big summer at Arlington, Baird and major owner Frank Calabrese went separate ways, and Baird abandoned his new winter base at Fair Grounds after a week. He then showed up at Gulfstream the first week in February - but none of this has changed the essence of Baird. The man has made his reputation deftly guiding horses onto the lead at Chicago tracks - which is exactly what he did in engineering Recapturetheglory's upset victory Saturday in the Illinois Derby at Hawthorne.
Breaking on top from post 1, Recapturetheglory and Baird took advantage of at least a mildly speed-favoring racetrack, turning back a mild challenge from Golden Spikes and going on to a four-length win.
Victory in the Grade 2, $500,000 race came in Recapturetheglory's stakes debut, and was just his second win. Recapturetheglory won a two-turn maiden race in the fall, ran second to Cool Coal Man in a Churchill Downs allowance race, then took a 45-day break. He made his comeback in a turf allowance race Feb. 29 at Fair Grounds, arrived at Hawthorne 10 days ago, and ran his way into a Kentucky Derby berth if trainer and co-owner Louis Roussel so desires.
Roussel, who was in New Orleans on Saturday, is partners on Recapturetheglory with Ronny Lamarque, the same team that brought Risen Star to the Triple Crown in 1988. Recapturetheglory's win was Roussel's first following a five-year sabbatical from training.
Recapturetheglory, who paid $19.20 to win, was really the only horse running at the finish, and was timed in 1:49.01 for nine furlongs on a fast track. Golden Spikes, who pressed the pace, finished second, followed by Z Humor, who ran in third almost all the way around. In fourth was second-choice Atoned, while 4-5 favorite Denis of Cork checked in fifth.
Denis of Cork never appeared comfortable on the Hawthorne main track. Jockey Julien Leparoux was niggling on the colt to try and keep pace as early as six furlongs from the finish, and Denis of Cork raced evenly while wide in the stretch.
"Julien said he never seemed comfortable," trainer David Carroll said. "He just never looked like he was traveling well."
Recapturetheglory debuted at Arlington last summer under the tutelage of Lara Van Deren, in whose name the Roussel horses race in Chicago.
"We always liked him," said Van Deren, who saddled Recapturetheglory on Saturday. "He just hit a few stumbling blocks early on."
On the lead through a half-mile in a moderate 48.61 seconds, and with plenty of horse on the far turn, Baird found himself in a familiar position.
"I knew it was going to take something special to catch me," said Baird.
Copyright (c)2008 ESPN Internet Ventures.
Georgie Boy Is Sidelined
Georgie Boy, one of the top contenders for this year's Triple Crown races, will miss the Santa Anita Derby on Saturday and the Kentucky Derby after pulling a back muscle.
"It's high on his back end and we don't know how long it will take [to heal], but we're not going to take a chance," Santa Anita-based trainer Kathy Walsh told the Thoroughbred Times.
The injury will not require surgery, Walsh said after X-rays proved negative.
Georgie Boy, a son of sire Tribal Rule, won the Grade I Del Mar Futurity last year as a 2-year-old and was undefeated with two stakes victories this season.
(c) Copyright 1996-2008 The Washington Post Company
Autism Awareness: Better than winning at 62-1 odds
Johnny Taboada is a man with a horse and a cause.
Right now, neither are in great shape. But, oh my, what might have been.
The Kentucky Derby is a month away. Taboada never dreamed he'd be anywhere near it, especially as an owner of one of the horses. Then there are the Preakness and the Belmont, completing racing's Triple Crown, but also not on Taboada's radar.
Generally, the blue bloods of horse racing, the prominent people with prominent trainers and jockeys, occupy the owners' boxes at Louisville, Ky.; Baltimore; and Elmont, N.Y. Taboada, of Pleasanton in Northern California, recently shifted from a job in the mortgage business -- "I don't have to explain why these days," he says -- to a post as director of operations for a nonprofit data information company in the Silicon Valley, KnowledgePlex Inc.
Taboada and his family live fine, but not exactly Overbrook Farm fine.
But then, for about three magical days, anything looked possible.
They ran the El Camino Real Derby at Bay Meadows on March 8. It is a $150,000 race. Also, a prep race for the Kentucky Derby, meaning that the winning horse, and possibly a strong finisher or two, might be looked at as an entry this May 3.
It certainly isn't the Santa Anita Derby, nor the Wood Memorial, but the $90,000 paycheck to the winner is a nice start toward eligibility, since those going to the Derby starting gate are those with the most earnings.
Taboada had a horse he bought for $1,000. Yes, $1,000. That's tip money for any Kentucky Derby trainer.
The horse already had run 11 times as a 2-year-old, twice more as a 3-year-old, and Taboada and trainer Genaro Vallejo were looking for another race. The horse had, after all, finally won, getting home first over a mile at Golden Gate Fields on Jan. 21.
Nothing in February seemed to fit and Taboada decided to let him run with the big boys, the Derby hopefuls, in the El Camino Real. The entry fee was $1,500, or $500 more than he paid for the horse.
So when Taboada's horse made a strong move at the end and won the race, it was quite a story. It had gone off at 62-1, paying $126, $46.40 and $17.60 and, as veteran race expert Bill Christine wrote in Horse-
RaceInsider.com, it was underpriced.
"Should have gone off at a minimum of 100-1," Christine wrote.
Oh, yes. The horse was named Autism Awareness, which is the real story.
Taboada has two sons, Marcel, 9, and Renzo, 8.
Marcel is heavily into the horse race business.
"He reads everything," Taboada says. "He wants to know about stallions, about fees. He asks me how many hands a horse is."
Renzo is autistic.
"He is likable, charismatic, a wonderful boy," Taboada says. "He goes everywhere with us. He can't be left alone.
"He loves being at the races because he is with us. He was there in the winner's circle that day. But he has no concept of what it means to win or lose. He just wants to be there."
The developmental disability called autism is difficult to define because there are so many forms of it. It is often characterized by repetitious and inappropriate behavior. It also can carry with it measures of near genius, such as the Dustin Hoffman character in the movie "Rain Man."
Part of the chance to buy race horses for Taboada, and his wife, Hedieh, was that they could name them in a way that might bring more awareness to the disability.
That will work pretty well when you win a Grade III race, going off at 62-1, no matter where it is.
"I was on top of the world, overwhelmed," Taboada says. "That day, and the day after the race, it just never stopped. Phone calls, reporters. I was on a cloud."
That burst three days later, when it was found that Autism Awareness had injured a left foreleg, probably in the race, and would need to sit out for at least a couple of months.
"No, no chance for the Preakness or Belmont," Taboada says. "We'll let him sit for three or four months. We'll listen to the horse. If he needs six months, he'll get six months."
Taboada says he was more than willing to dig into the proceeds of the El Camino Real race to pay the Derby entry fee, which would have been $6,000 if paid by March 29. There was no guarantee that Autism Awareness' total purses would have added up to enough to get in, anyway. But even having a chance was more than Taboada could have ever imagined.
"The way I felt those days," he says, "you just cannot imagine."
Nor can it be imagined what sort of boost in autism awareness would have come from an entry in the Kentucky Derby by Autism Awareness.
Need a story angle to sell your editor? Looking for something that feels real good? How about pictures of Renzo, sipping an alcohol-free mint julep?
All is not lost, Taboada says. He says Autism Awareness might just turn out to be a prominent 4-year-old. He also says he purchased the full sister of Autism Awareness, and though she hasn't raced yet, she could turn out to be special.
Her name is also a request, one that comes from a man with a huge wish, for a boy with a huge need.
Johnny Taboada named the filly Cure Autism.
Copyright 2008
Los Angeles Times
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