Red Hot!

- Are these guys hot or what?? Can you believe that Cash Is King, just a day after Afleet Alex’s Preakness win, took 2 consecutive races at Delaware Park yesterday! After their suitably named Racing Luck took a NW3 allowance race, a first time starter named Kelsey’s Treasure broke her maiden by 12 lenghts! Like her more famous stablemate, she is by sire Northern Afleet. Dick Jerardi of the Philly Daily News sums up the incredible ride for this ownership group, which bought its first horse almost exactly one year ago.

Cash Is King Stable bought its first horse on May 18, 2004. The 2-year-old colt was purchased at Timonium, a tiny race track/sales venue a few miles north of Baltimore. There were perhaps a few hundred people bidding on horses the Tuesday after Smarty Jones dominated the Preakness.

After stops at six tracks in five states, while winning big-time races such as the Hopeful, Sanford and Arkansas Derby and running against all the best horses of his generation, Afleet Alex emerged in the late afternoon sunshine on May 21, 2005 at Pimlico, just 20 minutes from where he was bought. This time, there were 115,318 people betting on horses.

In the year plus 3 days, Afleet Alex had taken his rider, trainer and five-person partnership from the Philadelphia area on a horse racing tour none of them ever could have imagined.

- Noble Causeway will have surgery for an entrapped epiglottis. Not sure what that is, but it sounds like it could possibly be what makes Dick Cheney talk out of the side of his mouth like he does. Zito said: "Nothing has gone right for the horse….Not to take anything away from Gary Stevens, who likes the horse and rode him well in the Derby and Preakness, but we had a jockey in Pat Day who fit the horse like a glove [Bloodhorse]

- Giacomo was no match for Smarty Jones, as the Preakness ratings fell 18%. But betting handle was a record in every category.