Odds and Ends

- Florida's Pompano Park harness track has established a new rule restricting the use of the whip.

New to racing in North America, the rules call for drivers in any type of race to never be allowed to put the reins in one hand in order to strike a horse with a whip at any time during the race.
.....
Penalties start at $100 for the first offense, but there is also an additional ruling that allows for anyone found to be whipping a horse excessively at any time to be fined up to an additional $1,000 and be suspended from competing and/or ejected from the property. [US Trotting Association]

However, a commenter on the USTA's new Harnessphere social networking site (something I imagine the incredibly passionate and hardworking folks on the NTRA Online Task Force may want to look at), wonders if the penalties have enough teeth.

Are you telling me that getting close to the wire in a stretch duel one of the drivers is not going to one handed whip to get the win? I don't think the $100 fine will even be a thought in his mind. But disqualify the horse and you know he's not going to do it. Plus it is UNFAIR to all who bet the other horse and now lost their money because in essence the driver who beat them cheated.

Think about it!!!!! [Harnessphere]

- Like Saratoga, Del Mar's attendance and handle numbers were down; no surprise there given the economy, and especially so considering that last year's universal ADW experiment was not repeated this year.

What I'd personally be more interested in is to get the statistics on fatal injuries suffered on the Polytrack surface. Curiously, while Del Mar said the amount of overall catastrophic breakdowns “were also lowered," it has not released any statistics. Who's running their press department, Dana Perino? If anyone has any information on that, we'd all love to hear about it.

We were told that the starters-per-race held even from last year at 8.6 horses per race, which may (or may not) dispute a notion I'd heard that horses had been "beat up" on Hollywood's Cushion Track. Again, we hear a lot of vague rumors and whispers about soft tissue injuries and other so-called "non-catastrophic" injuries, and I continue to wonder why nobody seems to want to come out and say anything definitive or present some statistical and anatomical evidence of that.

I turned on TVG last evening, and I was really surprised that they didn't have the A-team out in full force with their on-site reporting and Christina Olivares and the like for closing day. I can't really figure that network out sometimes....I mean, it's not like they have much to do between now and the time that Santa Anita opens. I have to be honest that I just haven't watched TVG much lately anyhow. They generally do good work when they are on-site. But usually, the times I turn it on they just have the sleep-inducing talking heads on from the studio. I could easily go back to Time Warner Cable and live quite comfortably with the NYC-OTB channel. I don't get the prime winter tracks on TVG anyway. Without those, I'm finding its usefulness to be extremely limited nowadays.

I wrote the other day about how I pay attention to how first-timers from major barns are bet in their debut when evaluating them the next time they race. So I was skeptical of morning line favorite Midshipman (Unbridled's Song) from the start since he was 11.80 to 1 when he won his debut for StonerSheikh and Bob Baffert. So you can only imagine how much I didn't like him when he was comatose on the board for the Del Mar Futurity; the 3-1 morning line favorite, he went off as the 6-1 4th choice! Glad I didn't bet this race, as he edged out, appropriately enough, Darley's Coronet of a Baron.

The next time these two run, most likely in the Grade 1, $250,000 Norfolk Stakes at Santa Anita's Oak Tree meeting on Sept. 27, they will both be flying under the Darley banner. [DRF]

Back From The Dead

- Speaking of staycations, business continues to generally boom at the Yonkers Raceway racino. Business has leveled off a bit as the summer wanes....is it a coincidence that gas prices have eased over that time? But look at the numbers from last summer compared to this, and the improvement is quite evident.

As slots revenues rise, so do the purses for the races. The latest purse increase was 21.6%, after a 15% boost in July. This has boosted the fortune of the horsemen, and not only with respect to earnings. Business at the claim box is going through the roof. Seven horses were claimed just this past Saturday.

The highest claim for $50,000 was followed by three claims at $40,000; one at $30,000 and two at $20,000. The total spent at the claim box was $240,000. [LoHud.com]

The track is now considering claiming races with tags as high as $100,000. In a statement, the Standardbred Owners Association of NY said: "None of the present positive action at Yonkers Raceway was conceivable before the VLTs came on board."

This is all pretty amazing when you consider that, not too long ago, the track had been left for dead. Waiting for the End at Yonkers Raceway reads the headline of a virtual obituary published in the NY Times in 2000.

A year after celebrating its centennial, Yonkers Raceway is dying. What was once New York's greatest gambling venue has lost out to TV, casinos, and harness racing's failure to attract a new generation of fans.

''Our time at Yonkers has come to an end,'' Tim Rooney, the racetrack's owner, said in an interview in his office at the track. ''You can't have a 100-acre facility and just use a fraction of the property.'' After losing roughly $5 million for three years running, the track broke even in 1999, but the property is for sale, and the track will likely be gone in a year or two.

The only way to revive the track, said Mr. Rooney, would be to introduce slot machines, which have brought new life to a number of dying harness tracks in other states. Although casino gambling is illegal in New York State, slot machines -- or a near variant known as Video Lottery Terminals -- could become legal at Yonkers if a current effort to introduce casino gambling in the Catskills is successful.

However, that is viewed as a long shot, and is not likely to delay the track's sale, which could happen as early as this summer, said Joe Morningstar, the managing director of Rockwood Realty, the principal marketer of the property.

Meanwhile, the track is slowly being dismantled.

That all changed...except of course at Aqueduct....the following year when, faced with dire financial circumstances after the 9/11 attacks, the legislature approved VLT's at the state's racetracks.

- The MSG Network, which has absolutely nothing to do but show old Rangers and Knicks games during the summer, will televise the Woodward Stakes on Saturday.

- Free grandstand AND clubhouse admission at Saratoga on closing day. So it's a chance for you to wander into the clubhouse and check out where the better half bets. No profanity please. Maybe you'll run into Joe Bruno if you're lucky.

- Nice job by NYRA, creating a Curlin web page, complete with a "blog" by Robby Albarado, a workout tab, and links to past performances, some nice photos, and replays of all of his career races.

- Governor Paterson addressed the Democratic convention on Tuesday.

- Duck!

No Exceptions at Elitlopp

- Straying over to the harness side for a moment, on Sunday, some of the world's best trotters will compete in the prestigious Elitlopp in Stockholm, Sweden. The lone North American invitee is Enough Talk, a five year old representing his native Canada, but who is stabled at the Meadowlands for trainer Peter Kleinhans, who purchased him privately for $250,000 in March. Subsequently, he set a world record of 1:52.2 for older trotters on a 5/8ths track. That makes him a World Champion in harness racing parlance, which I think is pretty cool.

Kleinhans has been posting on Andrew Cohen's First Over blog on Harnessracing.com, and I found this entry interesting for a couple of reasons:

The only thing I'm not happy about with him is his hind heels. He's got a bit of irritation there, which is not a problem right now but I'm trying to make sure it doesn't get worse, since I can't really treat it the way I normally would.

Horses sometimes have a tendency to develop cracks in their heels which often ooze or bleed slightly; sometimes this is a result of salts from the track, sometimes it is a result of minor, localized bacterial infections. They are not harmful to the horse in general, but they can become painful if not treated. My favorite treatment is an antibiotic salve called SSD; this combines silver nitrate, a great, soothing dryer-outer and calmer-downer, with an antibiotic.

Unfortunately, I am not allowed to use anything with any kind of antibiotic in it within 96 hours of the race, and I am now inside this window. I am working with my veterinarian, Brian MacNamara, and with local officials here to find a treatment that is both effective and that will not test positive or break any of the Elitlopp rules. I have to make 100% sure that even a seemingly-innocuous remedy is within the specific boundaries of pre-race treatment for this race. This is the kind of tightrope-walking that training often entails, and I want to make sure I handle it properly for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As soon as the race is over, he'll be getting his SSD back and the problem will be resolved, but in the meantime the challenge is to keep his heels from flaring up and bothering him on Sunday. [First Over]

For one thing, I guess that's good to know if you're planning on wagering on the race, available as it is at outlets in New Jersey and Canada. More significantly, it's another example of the striking contrast between racing here and, it would seem, just about every other place in the world. Seems as if Kleinhans is in a tight spot over there, but the strict no-exceptions rules certainly levels the playing field and eliminates any misunderstandings over fine lines.

And also, I'd love to read more stuff like this from trainers of any breed. I know they're busy and work odd schedules, and most of them aren't lawyers as Kleinhans is. But certainly we can do better than that Rags to Riches blog, or the blabberings of Dutrow in the NY Post.

- The Elitlopp is a two-heat affair, and it's pretty funny to imagine any thoroughbreds running two races within hours of each other. I don't think Formulator carries any stats on that. Enought Talk will be driven by Luc Ouellette, and starts from the four post in his elimination heat. The first four finishers of each will run in the final.