Japan Cup

- If you missed the Japan Cup, you can check it out here if you have the right media player to do so; it’s well worth the effort, what a race! As the leader Tap Dance City tired in the stretch, and the pack moved in, the filly Ouija Board looked like the strong horse at first. Then Alkaased came flying on the outside, but they came at him from both sides. The son of Kingmambo was dead game in repelling favorite Zenno Rob Roy on his outside and then just holding off Heart’s Cry, rallying to his inside, for the win. A crowd of 95,000 was screaming and what a great race call from the gentleman whose name I do not know.

If you can see this replay, which comes via the Hong Kong Jockey Club site, you see another example of TV coverage of racing abroad willing to deviate from the continuous cut from the main camera focused on the leaders that is standard at U.S. tracks. As they went down the backstretch, the camera panned slowly through the field, so one could get a close-up of how the trailers were faring. Then, after cutting to one of those great shots from a close-up camera tracking the field, they again panned through the field, stopping for a moment to linger on the favorite Zenno Rob Roy as he started his rally. I didn't feel I was missing anything from not seeing every step of the unchallenged front-runner. After the finish, they showed a slow motion overhead view of the finish with the finish line superimposed on the screen, and you can hear the crowd gasp as the horses hit the wire. This angle leaves no doubt whatsoever as to who won the race, as close as it was, and man, it was close. Dettori joked that the stewards "left me suffering and sweating for 20 minutes’’ before the final result was announced. [Thoroughbred Times] The photo for the show spot looked like a virtual dead heat, with Zenno Rob Roy getting the nod.

If that view of the finish were to be adopted here, it would eliminate any little doubt still remaining as to the result of a race before the numbers are posted on the board. When I first started out, there were no replays of the finish at all until after the race was declared official. So you got one look with the naked eye, at regular speed (in black and white if you were watching on TV) and that was it! Talk about sweating out a photo; those were the days. It wasn’t at all unusual to see people betting on the photo result – some people were quite consistent and made a steady income from the practice. I did it once and lost five bucks, and never tried again.

You may recall that Alkaased was here for the BC Turf, though his trainer Luca Cumani never seemed to have his heart in it, at first unhappy about the soft ground, then scratching him due to an illness. Ouija Board was impeded a bit when Heart’s Cry brushed past, and finished a gallant 5th. Turf winner Bago threw a shoe and finished 8th. The Americans Better Talk Now and King’s Drama were no match for their foreign counterparts.

Alkaased is one of 57 stakes winners (9% of foals) for sire Kingmambo (Mr. Prospector), whose stud fee remains at $300,000 for 2006.

- Balance (Thunder Gulch) was just the kind of horse we were talking about the other day; the kind that gets bet in a dirt race on the basis of Beyers earned on the turf, making him an apparent underlay. First under the wire in two races on the grass (dq’d in one), Balance was sent off as the 9-5 favorite in the Sharp Cat Stakes at Hollywood, but in this case the chalk players were right on. She won handily, kicking home the final sixteenth in :6 1/5. She’ll stay on the dirt now, and head for the G1 Starlet on 12/18.

Balance is out of a Kris S mare, and is a half to stakes winner Where’s Bailey. Her sire, the 1995 Derby and Belmont winner Thunder Gulch, is taking a hit in his stud fee for 2006, going from $40,000 to $25,000. His 48 career stakes winners is just 4% of foals (10% is considered the benchmark, though with sires having such large books these days, that number is becoming more difficult to achieve). Balance is his second California two-year old filly stakes winner in a week, as his Private World took the Moccasin Stakes last Sunday. He had a decent book of 84 mares in 2005, and at $40,000 per, that added up to $3,360,000. He’ll have to work some overtime to achieve that amount in 2006.