Thursday Night Notes

- Any Given Saturday gets a big Beyer - a 110 - for his win in the Dwyer; and as Steve Crist points out in the Form, that number is right there with Street Sense's Derby (110), Curlin's Preakness (111), and Rags to Riches's Belmont (107). True, he had a nice trip, but with his pedigree, one would think he should be even better when he gets back to two turns.

Idiot Proof got a 113 for his win, achieved in track record time (1:07.47) in the Jersey Shore. He burst away from the field after stalking and setting a torrid pace, and did so while taking a zig-zagging route home. In his wake were the two 3-2 shots, Principle Secret, who beat Idiot Proof in the San Pedro at Santa Anita, and Spin Master. This was a 23 point Beyer improvement for this horse, in his sixth career start. If he's taken a liking to the Monmouth surface, he's chosen a good year to do so. Idiot Proof is a son of the California sire Benchmark, out of a Bertrando mare. Not much else I see fit to write about his pedigree, but his breeder/owner Marty Wygod, who certainly knows more than me, must have seen something.

Monmouth does not make their videos available to Cal Racing; you can get them through the Monmouth site for free via RaceReplays.com. I went there to watch Idiot Proof, and the video and sound quality for that site is still awful, after I hadn't used it for many months. Is it just me....an incompatible browser or computer....or are there videos virtually unwatchable? (You can see the race for real on the NTRA site.)

Speaking of bad video, I was watching Ken Rudolph and Todd Schrmmmppfff on TVG before - they were doing their TVG Sprint update show, concentrating on this Saturday's Calder Summit of Speed, and the Triple Bend at Hollywood. They were showing some replays of the various contenders, and I noticed that the quality of the video was really lousy for some of the races. Then I saw that those particular races were the ones from Santa Anita and Churchill Downs. While the TrackNet Two granted permission to TVG to show their races, it looked like they made them take the races off of You Tube!