The Breeders Bowl

- Hank Goldberg was just in the booth for the Louisville-West Virginia game, and they were talking up the Breeders Cup. When asked if he was more excited about this game or Saturday's races, he said that the Breeders Cup is like eight bowl games on the same day; nice set-up there. They've had a couple of live shots from a lit-up Churchill Downs, and a Breeders Cup Preview is promised for half time.

- It seemed a bit strange seeing the Form for the Breeders Cup with the horses listed in post position order after getting so used to seeing them listed alphabetically. I have to get used to looking at the bottom for Balletto instead of at the top.

With all the excitement about Saturday, the opening of the Cushion Track at Hollywood got overshadowed, but the reactions and quotes are quite familiar, despite the fact that two horses, later determined to be uninjured, were pulled up prematurely. Victor Espinoza said: "Most of the horses I've ridden feel totally different on it. It's more bouncy and the horses have more confidence." [LA Times] Here's an interesting quote by trainer Mark Glatt:

“What I've seen is that minor inflammation in joints, since I've trained here, has gone away, versus Del Mar this summer where those problems would have continued on....I have to believe it's much kinder because I'm seeing some minor problems go away, almost to the point of being nonexistent.” [SignOnSanDiego.com]

An interesting disparity in results; Wednesday's races were dominated by closers and it looked like it was Keeneland all over again. But today's resuls instead favored speed and close to the pace, which raises the question whether any adjustments were made.

But it's almost scary the way all of the artificial tracks thus far have received such effusive praise with nary a disparaging word. And Cushion Track - just the name makes me feel all bouncy and playful. It's starting to remind me of that Twilight Zone episode when the smiling aliens came to Earth with a book written in some Alienese entitled "To Serve Mankind," and as the stupid humans were loading onto spaceships to visit their planet, the interpreters discovered that it was a cookbook. Let's hope that the era of synthetic tracks doesn't end with Rod Serling leaning against the sixteenth pole. "Little did they know that they were racing..straight into......."

- Halftime, and I had to endure Lou Holtz, who makes me sick, in order to get to a brief pre-recorded segment with Randy Moss and Kenny Maine, who said with his characterstic smirk that all of "OO-ruguay" will go crazy if Invasor wins. Randy Moss said that Kiaran McLaughlin is confident with Invasor and feels that Bernardini's post position may make him vulnerable.