- Being a dickhead: So easy, T.J. Simers can do it.
- Here's a couple of differing views in the comments section on the dispute over Jamaica Hospital that caused the shutdown of racing at Aqueduct this weekend. Blogger Superfecta has some personal experience with which to comment on the situation.
- Got a note from someone working with Empire Racing directing me to the details of their integrity plan, which is posted on their website. Empire in fact has some details regarding several aspects of their proposal posted here, and I've been remiss in not pointing that out earlier. It's more than we can say for Excelsior, whose website contains no meaningful information on their proposal at all. The last I read, the Ad Hoc committee is still working on the release of all of the details, which were supposed to be disclosed last month.
Speaking of Excelsior, baseball commish Bud Selig has yet to issue his ruling on Yankees' Boss-in-waiting Steve Swindal's involvement with slots parlors should they win the franchise bid. Boston Globe columnist Nick Cafardo recounts how a Pittsburgh Pirates' partner canned his slots bid under the assumption that Selig would never approve it, and concludes: Our most educated guess is that Swindal doesn't have a chance of being part of this. But who knows? Who knows, indeed, and the way Swindal is so smug about it, I can't help but be suspicious that he's gotten some indication that Selig will come up with some way to approve it. Methinks he'll have to be quite creative in order to do so.
- Also heard from the gentleman who was prophetic in his prediction about Strong Contender, which was relayed to me in a private email a few weeks ago as follows:
Of course, what John Ward colt was ever any good after the spring of his 3 year old year? Maybe Pyramid Peak, and that's a stretch. Maybe Strong Contender will make a liar out of me, but if I had a gun to my head, I would bet he doesn't win a grade 1 or 2 this year and is retired before July 4th.- Please feel free to email me with any brilliant predictions of your own.
3 Comments:
I was at the Empire Racing's "Town Hall Meeting." I am not surprised that Empire never addressed some questions - or listed them on their wesite recap (listed under "7. Anything else you’d like to add?" by some groups turned in with their notes...) One ingored question was, "What is the difference between your stance of 'for profit' and the others that are 'non-profit' ? And several comments were written about Empire's relationship with Bruno...
Regarding the ambulance situation, NYRA is bleeding money at this point, if the jocks want to contract with a private ambulance firm to take them wherever they want to go, by all means they should go ahead and do so, but to expect NYRA to pay for it is wrong.
Guess the real issue is their insistance on independent contractor status while insisting on all the benefits of being an employee.
Presumably one of the factors in deciding where to ride is the treatment they would recieve in case of an accident. If they are not happy at Jamaica, have their own ambulance on call or ride elsewhere. Nothing is forcing any of them to ride at Aqueduct.
I know it sounds insensitive, but there are a lot of folks that are working very hard in sub freezing temps and depend on the money provided by winter racing. The jocks are insensitive to those individuals needs every time they shut down the racetrack for something other than unsafe racing conditions.
Every race cancelled is money out of these peoples pockets.
Regarding Excelsior, Stein and Selig are close freinds so anything is possible.
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