Homework is done early

Apparently, there is this place in the interwebs, called foursquare or fourspace or myfour...foursomething. Anyway, in this place you tweet about where you are and what you are doing and businesses have access to this information and they can tailor offers to you based on location. Targeted advertising, if you will.

As I understand it, one can establish a foothold of some sort and earn the title of mayor or proctologist in chief, based on number of visits or promotions earned or how many other ridiculous people one can convince that the soup you are ordering is worth a dam.

Are racetracks clued in to this phenomenon? They could give away betting vouchers or whatever to whoever manages to bring the most people. Free admission and $10 worth of bets...whatever.

Conan O'Brien did a thing where he picked some random Twitterererer and said he was going to follow this person. I guess she had only three followers at the time and soon ended up with over 15,000. Leo Laporte, on his weekly show TWIT, decided to do something similar and found some unsuspecting woman in New Zealand with only two followers, who had twittered twice and the last one read something like I hate technology. He promised an iPad to her and one person, chosen at random, that decided to follow this woman. Within an hour, she had 2000 followers, at last count, she has over 17,000. All because she hated technology.

To think the NTRA was so close to winning an iPad.

How is that for marketing?

What if XpressBet or HRTV or whoever bought a horse at Keeneland or Calder or Ocala and gave away a 20% share, or the whole damn thing plus one year training costs, to whoever registered the most users or Twittererereres?

Get creative.

Anyway...

In Tesio's Breeding the Racehorse, Edward Spinola, in the introduction, relates the story of how Tesio prepped Nearco for the Grand Prix de Paris run over 3000 metres.

He decided to run him against two other three year olds, over the same distance as the Grand Prix. He chose Ursone, 7 of 9 over the distance and Bistolfi, Italy's best miler.

The plan had Nearco and Ursone breaking together and then hooking up with Bistolfi after seven furlongs. Nearco and Bistolfi carried 119lbs, Ursone 108lbs.

Nearco won handily. Not only did he beat a classy horse at his favorite distance while giving him 11lbs, he trounced a miler, at his distance, while running nearly twice as far.

All that to say this. I watched the team pursuit, speed skating thing, during the Olympics and found it entertaining.

It consists of two teams of three, at opposite ends of the rink, skating whatever the distance is. The fastest team wins but the time stops when your last team member crosses the line, so the team is only as good as the weakest member.

What if racing implemented such an idea? Have three teams-team Moss, Jackson and IEAH, to name just a few-enter three horses each at whatever the distance is. I think the longer distances would lend themselves more readily to the event, and when I say longer distances I am not referring to a mile. Run the race over two miles or even...wait for it...longer.

Make a series out of it with elimination heats and what not. Maybe some sponsorship like a, you know, commercially sustainable product.