VLT Time Approaches

The Head Chef does some work in the NYC public school system for the Wellness In The Schools program. Based on the hostile tone of some of the comments and even private emailers (who at least have the courtesy and respect to make themselves known) I've gotten to razz me about the Republican winning in the 9th CD on Tuesday, I guess some of you are thinking that's a typical liberal to be so concerned with something like healthy eating, environmental awareness and fitness as a way of life for kids in New York City’s public schools. I mean, I know that all of us, of all political stripes, surely agree with the worthy goals of the program. You don't have to worry, they get no government financing. That money is free to go instead towards compensation for some of the corporate loopholes that Bob Turner, my Congressperson, has met and likes.

Anyway, the main point here is that the manager of school lunch at the school that the Head Chef was at on Wednesday announced that she had given her two weeks notice in order to take a job at a fancy restaurant at the Aqueduct racino. She starts there late this month. And though I imagine there's some kind of training program before the restaurant opens to the public, it surely means that the promised land is not far off. After all these years of false starts, it seems hard to believe that it's really going to happen, for worse and, for the New York Racing Association and, by extension we all expect for its horsemen and fans, the better. We know the racino will wow; we'll see what improvements if any are made on the racing side in time for next month's opening. We've been told that Genting will contribute some resources to that effort, but NYRA itself has identified other priorities for the initial inflows at this time.

- Contessa took the 4th, on the turf, at Belmont on Wednesday with Salsa Mambo ($35.20). This barn starts so many horses that it rarely has a high win percentage, so its five wins from its last 12 races is a pretty good run. In the Jazzy Stakes, his Battingstar led into the stretch at 20-1 and lost by only three lengths.

The 5th was the race I discussed in the last post, and morning line favorite Smokin Star ($9.80) ended up being the distant third choice. If I was there, I probably would've figured he was dead on the board and thrown him out. Maybe however he was just a legitimate overlay with all the money bet on the two horses coming off layoffs and running first time for a tag. Unprecedented was claimed by Chatterpaul Naipaul for $35,000. Must me a trustful man to take that horse from Dutrow dropping in for 35K off a 13 month layoff. The horse had trouble here and ran pretty well for 4th; be interesting to follow the progress of that one. Assuming he runs again.

In the 6th, well-bet first-timer Undaunted Ella ($6.20) won for Bruce Levine and owner/breeder Gus Schoenborn, who also bred and owned her half-brother, the successful NY-bred Metro Meteor. Two-year old is a daughter of the rookie sire Half Ours, the one-time $6.1 million purchase while in training, now standing in Louisiana for $4500.

- Have some time for Thursday's card, but I dunno, this reader Johnnie is making me feel bad about my picks. Haven't exactly been lighting them up lately. But hey, I've had my moments to be sure. Don't make that many picks on the blog, so it can be a long-time calendar-wise between successes. And I like to think that someone can get something out of many if not most of my handicapping posts even if they're losers - an alert to a hot trainer, a key race, a track bias (occasionally), a particular handicapping angle, or even just inspiration to use Formulator, so you can have all that too-much-information, get away from the basics and see your results decline. (Or not.)

I thought there was some really thoughtful and worthwhile discussion on the trials and tribulations of handicapping in this comment section last week. Figless talks about discipline, jp about handicapping as a science (and about discipline as well), and wmcorrow laments that he's "no better at picking winners today than fifty years ago." I've written about that before (and other than the fact that I feel that way myself most of the time) (though I'm not quite at the 50 year mark). The rate of growth over the last two decades in the amount of information available to us through more data and better technology is staggering. Yet there's no evidence that I've ever read that the proficiency of horseplayers as a whole has increased at anywhere near that pace, if at all. Sometimes makes me wonder if the investment of time is a waste. Or maybe it's really not and I'm just in a quarter century-long slump. In which case, I'm due.