Post by Peter Gross on Feb 25, 2010 6:05:48 GMT -5
This will be my last blog for several days. I’m taking my kids to Disney World for a week (I’ll tell them we won the Superbowl). Of course, before I depart, I will be putting the finishing touches on the February issue of Down The Stretch, Canada’s most informative and entertaining horse racing newspaper.
You might think in the middle of winter, it would be hard to come up with 24 pages of material for a horse racing paper and you’d be wrong. In this issue, we have full coverage of both the O’Brien Awards for harness racing and the Sovereign Awards for the thoroughbreds. Down The Stretch had five nominations and went home with nothing. The editor, about as much a photographer as he is a slam-dunk finalist, had his Chantal in a flag picture nominated as best picture, but it was Michael Burns winning for his shot, Reflection of Talent. Sadly, Burns died just nine days after scoring his seventh Sovereign Award. His daughter, Patricia and son, Michael were especially helpful in providing me with wonderful images that comprise a two-page spread in the middle; a telling document of the work of a great photographer. Interesting that my e-mails to Michael the younger found him in Vancouver documenting the games as he has done many times before. Kind of Joannie Rochette experience for Michael, just days after losing his father.
“He was our best friend,” was how Michael summed up his dad.
Perry Lefko has immersed himself in the heart of controversy for this issue. Lefko has a story on the troubled Bulletbroof Stable, whose owners have all kinds of legal grief, not the least of which is having all their horses deemed ineligible to race in Ontario. And Lefko also writes about jockey Simon Husbands suing the Ontario Racing Commission and three stewards for the temporary one-year suspension he was hit with last fall. The stewards punished Husbands after a ride on Bugs Boy, in which, according to the stewards, the jockey did not persevere. Husbands appealed the penalty and the suspension was overturned, but according to his document, the suggestion that he ‘stiffed’ his horse has resulted in a significant dropoff in interest from trainers for his services.
The big horse racing news this month is that the two champion ladies – Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta are scheduled to race against each other for the first time. It’s the Apple Blossom Stakes on April 9 and Oaklawn Park has put up $5 million to attract the two wonderful thoroughbreds. Zenyatta has concentrated on beating her opposition on the synthetic tracks of California, but did win this race in 2008 as a four year-old. Rachel Alexandra has won twice at Oaklawn – she took the Martha Washington Stakes by 8 lengths here last February and in April, 2009, she stomped her rivals by almost nine lengths in the Grade II Fantasy Stakes. Rachel likes to go to the lead and dare the rest of the field to catch her. That’s what she did in the Woodward Stakes last summer at Saratoga when she became the first three year-old filly to beat older males in a Grade I race. Zenyatta likes to camp at the back of the pack for the early running and then make an eye-catching late run. This strategy has worked to perfection; Zenyatta is 14 for 14 in her career, including her spectacular victory in last fall’s Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita. I don’t need to say much more. This race at Oaklawn at a mile and an eighth will be great.
Also in the next issue of Down The Stretch – a twisted look at the three men who lead in the drivers standings at Woodbine, how Gardiner Farms has a strong lineup of stallions, especially for those who understand just how lucrative Ontario Sires Stakes can be, some hilarious quotes from the awards banquets, two full pages of Canadians winning races in the States, Eugene Melnyk as Owner of the Month, another unique take on the status of horse racing by Bob Carson and another full page of Oddities and Entities.
Which is to say, even in the dead of winter, there is more than enough stuff happening in horse racing to fill our paper
