Sunday Night Notes

Saturday's late Pick Four returned $764, with a pool of almost $485K easily exceeding the $350K guarantee, to those bettors who benefited from what seemed like a routine call on the DQ which made Separatist the winner. Seems like a good payoff to me, considering that, the way I saw it, the 8th was the only race which required going deep at all. Not redboarding - I mentioned Piazza di Spagna yesterday, and I did end up singling him. I used the two horses I mentioned in the 10th, of which the winner was one. And I of course took advantage of the free marker in the Mother Goose. I'm not that stupid. I was fully prepared to rescind my holy request that she somehow lose.

But it never got to that point because the half dozen horses I used in the 8th did not include Big Jerome ($40.20); and if the general silence which greeted the result was any indication, I was not nearly alone. My closest runner was Parc des Princes, third by a neck and a nose at 6.80 to 1. Never considered the winner; not that his past races at this level had been bad. And he had some nice back figs too. But he certainly wasn't inspiring, especially from the 13 post. Perhaps he paid off for some of you?

Rachel Alexandra got a Beyer of 111 for her 19 1/2 length win (with Durkin nailing it again) in stakes record time. There was some discussion about how fast the track was in the comments section here. Souped-up tracks on big race days is one of those things that nearly everybody says it's a bad thing, yet it happens every time, or so it seems. It's hard to understand - not like there's a public hankering out there for track records. And as one reader pointed out, besides being dangerous, it's boring.

With the other two horses setting a brisk pace just ahead, it was far more like a time trial in harness racing than your typical Grade 1 stakes race. Between that and the fast surface, it's little wonder she broke the stakes record. However, I imagine that the track has been fast for other Mother Goose cards; and the list of winners includes some of the legends of the sport. So it has to be considered an impressive accomplishment in any event.

Back to normal on Sunday with around 6,700 on hand. In the Grade 2 First Flight, Porte Bonheur had the classic pocket trip on the rail down the backstretch behind dueling leaders Carolyn's Cat and Sunday's Geisha. Ramon Dominguez had to swing her out to the four path for a running lane in the stretch, and it looked for all the world to me that she wasn't going to make it; even after she changed leads around midstretch. But the meet's leading rider - by a wide margin and not because he has all that many more mounts than the runners-up - kept driving on this four-year old daughter of the deceased Hennessy through a seventh furlong which she may want no part of. He managed to get her up by a nose through a fairly plodding final eighth of 13:07, earning a moderate Beyer of 87. Ramon certainly fits this filly, with three wins and a second in his four rides on her....but I'd look for her to stick to six in the future.

The barn of trainer Rodrigo Ubillo has been live all year. He'll need a new jockey or two these days; and Eibar Coa came through in the 10th with Vivi's Book. Ubillo has two winners, two seconds and a third with his last five runners here at Belmont.