149th Derby Doings

Mage Winning the 2023 Kentucky Derby

Another milestone on the calendar for me has come and gone. This year finds me recovering from rotator cuff surgery on my left shoulder. How did that happen? Seventy-four years old and a lifetime of painting indoors and out, wall papering, gardening, and woodworking might be the reasons. Nothing athletic. No fall. The parts are wearing out. Four  small arthroscopic holes. My wife adds that the 5th hole is in my head. Maybe. All went well, and I should be a full-fledged starter for Belmont in mid-June, gearing up for the starts at Saratoga in August. At least I'm not being euthanized like several horses this week at Churchill Downs.

As usual, Johnny M. came over and we cobbled together a $1 exacta box using four horses, Todd Pletcher's remaining two, and two from Brad Cox. They don't cash your ticket when you've got the exacta at the half-mile pole. Too fast. Secretariat did his record setting Derby half in :47 and change. These guys went :45 and change.  The track was playing fast for early fractions, and the adrenaline is high, but :45 is suicide for 1¼ miles.

Bobby G's mid-afternoon call found me telling him that his Forte/Kingsbarns exacta was a no bet. He wasn't even aware Forte was scratched. He'd been gardening.

You could tell from the interviews with Todd Pletcher and Mike Repole that they were more than disappointed at the state vet scratch of Forte. They were carefully diplomatic to say the right things, but it would seem that they didn't think the mandated scratch was warranted. Left alone, Forte would have run.

But who knows? Maybe he would have broken down from the residual hoof bruise. With a nation watching the two minutes of racing, Churchill Downs did not need another reason for a horse in the Derby to break down and have to name a race after it, like Eight Belles, a filly no less.

On the NBC telecast, Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Bailey outlined how the times have changed for considering a horse's soundness for racing. He related his story of riding Empire Maker in the 2003 Kentucky Derby to a second place finish behind Funny Cide after Empire Maker had a bone bruise similar to Forte's earlier that Derby week. Empire Maker ran fine, and later won the Belmont Stakes for the now deceased, Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel. Jerry said he never felt anything was unsound with the horse when he was riding him.

Mike Repole did get to the winner's circle in a Derby day race with Up to the Mark in the Grade 1 $1 Million Old Forrester Bourbon Stakes as the favorite. Up to the Mark is co-owned with St. Elias Stable whose billionaire Vinnie Viola also owns a portion of Forte and the N.H.L. team Florida Panthers. Brooklyn born Vinnie was Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of the Army, having graduated West Point. The nomination did gain traction, and Vinnie withdrew his name.

It was almost like old times reading the New York Times this week. There's a new sports editor at the NYT. Joe Drape and Melissa Hoppert had several byline stories, and the Times even did one of those Page 2 pieces, Why the Horse Racing Beat Goes On,  on Joe's evolving career at the Times. If Joe sounds a little bit like a downer on racing, he is only reporting what is true: it is contracting.

The now 87- year-old member of The Assembled (someone who went to Jamaica racetrack in the '50s) has similar feelings. We're taking part in a dying sport.

I know I feel it at 74 when I watch America's Best Racing telecasts from Belmont and I'm looking at 4 and 5 horse fields, empty stands, and empty paddock. Fours horses in the Sheepshead Bay Handicap? $150,000 for that? Gimme a break. A boat race.

I sarcastically Tweeted the always entertaining Big A Stable Anthony Stabile, (@TheBigAStable) one of the broadcasters asking if there had been a fire at Belmont's barns and there were no horses left for NYRA to put out on the track. No response expected, and there wasn't one.

Joe Drape in one of his stories this week points to how the breeding  shed is getting inbred. (A gorgeously photographed story when taken in online.) Fewer stallions are registered to service mares. Less than half the number from not all that long ago. With that kind of inbreeding I wonder if hemophilia is going to be detected in foals soon.

Joe tells us something I didn't know: "In 1991, Kentucky had 499 stallions whose books [breeding schedules] averaged 29.9 mares a year. Last year, Kentucky had 200 registered stallions who averaged 84 mares a year. Many argue that is not sustainable." They're breeding four-legged bone china. 

Win or lose, contracting sport or not, you'd have to believe the 150,000 at Churchill Downs yesterday had a blast. There's a terrific post race video of a clearly unsteady, drunken Japanese trainer of DermaSotogke being held up by his entourage as he attempts to answer some interview questions at a post-race trainers' news conference. Waaaaaaaaaaay too much saké, or whatever the poor guy was plowing through. It looks like a Saturday Night Live skit.

Could there be a dry eye in the joint from anyone who knows the Make-a-Wish Cody's Wish story involving the disabled young man the horse is named for? Cody's Wish, last year's Breeders' Cup dirt mile winner won in the easiest of fashion in the $750,000 7-furlong Churchill Downs Stake Presented by Ford Grade I race, making his first start of his 4-year-old career.

I had Cody's Wish when he beat Jackie's Warrior in the 7-furlong Allen Jerkens at Saratoga last year. I love a great middle distance horse. They run fast all the way. Cody's Wish came off :223/5, :45, 1:09 fractions, finishing in 1:21 with a 105 Beyer. Kudos all around to the Bill Mott trainee ridden by Junior Alvorado.

And the main event, the Derby itself? There can't be a winner that makes everyone happy. It's a zero sum game: you win or you lose, and this time a Venezuelan colt from Good Magic, named Mage, alluding to magic, took the roses in a fairly good 2:012/5 under another Venezuelan Hall-of-Fame jockey, Javier Castellano, no stranger to wining big races. [In racing, members can be active in the sport.] Complete Venezuelan affair in the Florida-based trainer Gustavo Delgado.

Second in the Derby, finishing second a length to the 15-1 Mage was the 9-1 Two Phil's, owned by two guys from Chicago named Phil, and forever proving that there are few people who know how to use an apostrophe correctly. Not even the Jockey Club who controls the names. 

( I will say they must have exerted some influence on the spelling of the 38-1 gelding Nobals who won yesterday's 7th race at Churchill Downs. Someone snuck something by them. Nobals is still pronounced the same as Noballs.)

Japan's trying to win the Derby. The Saudis are trying to win the Derby. In 1971 Venezuela did win the Derby with crooked-legged Canonero II, who went on to win the Preakness and breathed hope into the elusive Triple Crown pursuit. Hope until it was quickly revealed the horse had no ability to run a 1½ miles, finishing 4th, and setting up the gigantic $80+ win mutuel price that Pass Catcher paid. (Picked by out mentor Les, Mr. Pace, who had a deuce on him.)

I was there for that Belmont, and the 4th floor of the Belmont clubhouse was overflowing with Venezuelans who made the trip hoping to see their hero win the Triple Crown. If Mage takes the Preakness, NYRA is going to be wet with anticipation of all the Venezuelans booking into the track. (I won't be there this time.)

I think I've watched one more Derby than all the Super Bowls. I have no plans to try and go to the Derby, and don't even want to be part of Belmont Day anymore. We used to go every year, but they made getting a seat an act of inheritance and financial burden.

Special days and special venues, like Churchill Downs, and Saratoga, and probably Gulfstream and Santa Anita do well enough to keep those states from paving the grounds.

New York is in the lobbying process of trying to get money for Belmont renovations. They've already gotten the runnel carved out that will allow infield viewing on Belmont Day, and the facilitation of maintenance vehicles. 

Further amenities are no doubt planned in the hopes of getting the Breeders' Cup putting NYRA back on the annual schedule. But believe me, nothing is going to turn the place into a crowded venue on anything other than Belmont or a possible Breeders' Cup day.  And I dread the thought of a planned synthetic running surface. Aqueduct will probably go, but perhaps not in my lifetime.

Racing is made possible by gambling dollars, and those are shrinking. It's not their fault. There is more TV coverage, opportunities to make a bet, more information, more analysis than ever before. Interest however is not high. The exotic, multi-leg bets are driving the handle, and this kind of bet is not easily understood by the average newbie. Without the syndicates plowing money into large permutation bets (driven by field size), the sport gets a shrinking cut of a shrinking betting pool.

The ownership of horses at NYRA tracks is clustered amongst a core set of individuals, Mike Repole and Vinnie Viola among them. When you listen to how Mike got into the game you will hear the story of how he and his friends spent quality time hugging the rail at Aqueduct near his Queens home growing up.. The now deceased Hall-of-Fame trainer Bobby Frankel would tell the story of coming back from Aqueduct to his Brooklyn home as a young lad with a fistful of $100 bills. He went back quickly.

Mike made it big with Vitamin Water. When you listen to Paul LoDuca and Richie Migliore talk about their backgrounds you hear of the uncles and fathers who took them to the track at young ages, and how they fell in love with it.

I had an Uber driver recently and we traded racing stories. We both agreed we were "horseplayers" and would never call ourselves "gamblers." We like the past performances, the math, and the puzzle of trying to turn arcane, hieroglyphic information and other statistics into cash. One look at the Morning Telegraph in 1968 and I was hooked. And financially rewarded.

Racetracks are Sunday in the park. I've never been in a dirty one, although these are downstate NYRA seats that seem to be on their last hinges. The grounds are usually pleasant to look at, even Aqueduct somehow. There is all that green grass. The floors are buffed clean.

When I travel, if there is a track open I take it in. Even a rain drenched day at Woodbine in Toronto that saw the turf racing canceled. I was so looking forward to seeing the turf course be on the outer and being raced on. Didn't happen.

Racetrack people are like circus people. They are married to other racetrack people; they are the sons and daughters of other racetrack people. They are born into the sport. It is a multi-generational sport.

Will it completely disappear? Not likely.  It will at least outlive me.

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