Checkbook Broodmares

- Bloodhorse.com reports that the Sheikh purchased the dams of Street Sense and Scat Daddy late last year in a new phase of their checkbook horsemanship. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that it shows a bit of unsophistication for him to go out and to overpay - which I'm just assuming he did but I'd bet I'm right - for a broodmare based on its foal winning a stakes or two as juveniles. I imagine that the sellers came out of the deal pretty happy. Neither broodmare has produced anything else of worth as of yet. And while both descend from productive distaff lines - Bedazzle, the dam of Street Sense, comes from a nice female family which includes the fashionable Mr. Greeley; Love Style, the dam of Scat Daddy, is out of the Las Virgenes winner Likeable Style and traces back to an influential broodmare in Nato - I wonder if the Sheikh even bothered to look that up?

Again, maybe I do underestimate the horsemanship part of His Royal Sheikhness'checkbook horsemanship, but I'd speculate that it was just a knee jerk reaction to buy the dams of what were arguably the top two juveniles at the time. It would be one thing if he intended to flip the foal and try to make money back that way, but we can assume that won't be the case.

- Jerry Bossert of the NY Daily News was home last week recovering from an automobile accident, and, after watching the races on TVG, came up with some familiar complaints:

Boy were we disappointed. TVG devoted most of its coverage to Keeneland with very little interest in Aqueduct. In some cases you had to wait 15 minutes for results of photos while listening to nonsense from talking heads who think they're comedians. I'd rather have the track feed, like Channel 71, because watching the races on TVG only made the pain worse. Thankfully the remote had a mute button.

I guess only a hardcore NYRA fan would complain about the coverage concentrating on Keeneland. But we've previously discussed the talking heads and the fact that the track feeds are usually preferable. Let's hope that the experience didn't cause a setback to Bossert's recovery, and that he's doing well.

- In the tooting my own horn section, I mentioned the other day that Ken McPeek seemed to be heating up at Keeneland, and he had two winners there on Wednesday. Also suggested to keep an eye on Dale Romans, and he just took the 3rd at Keeneland with 6-1 Acadia Breeze. Just thought I'd point that out.