Fear of the blank page

Could these be the saviors of horse racing?

If one buys into the theory that there is no such thing as bad press, then these two men have done their damndest to keep our sport in the proverbial spotlight. Dutrow was being Dutrow when he stated that he gives Winstrol to his horses on the fifteenth of each month and it brought the [H]ouse down on drugs in racing.(Literally and figuratively)

IEAH, while questionable in their social quotient, has kept Big Brown running and is pointing him to the BC Classic with a legitimate older horse still around somewhere.

Speaking of Curlin, he is probably voting for McCain this year.

RNA's are up and sales are down. Coolmore is on the sidelines and the Sheikh is buying up the dross as if he came from an oil rich nation. Could it be that we should have actually raced some of these horses before we shipped them off to stud?

Apparently 2,000,000,000 people watched the Tour de France in 2005, and this for a sport that is mired in a drug controversy. Good thing we don't have this problem.

If Lance can do it, why not Hard Spun or Peace Rules?

Raceday360 wire is up and running. Check it out. Tell the NTRA (I don't think they are clued into this internet thing yet) to check it out too.

Now we're cooking with gas.

'The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly-That is what each of us is here for.'
-Oscar Wilde

In some housekeeping affairs:

Yours truly managed to sneak past the qualifying round and make it into the TBA. Groucho's quote notwithstanding, I am happy to be aboard. Thanks everyone.

We now return to our regularly mundane blogging.

So my in-laws bought me this new thing called an I-pod recently. It apparently plays videos and music and stores all sorts of other media in a portable package. I have been playing around with it and trying to transfer all my old music onto this thing. In completely unrelated matters, does anyone know of any good software that converts 8-tracks to these mystical AAC files?

Anyway, I was playing around with the podcasts and looking for some that had horse racing related content. Granted, I have no idea what I am doing but I could not find any. Are there podcasts for horse racing news? All the NTRA has are race replays. No news, no insight. Nothing.

Seems to me that there is a niche for something like this. This internet thing doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon.

The Breeder's Cup revealed their new drug policy. That flame of hope, she flickers and fades but she does not die. Bravo.

Big Brown runs tomorrow in the Haskell and will, again, be the prohibitive favorite. Inasmuch as this entire affair has been a fiasco from the time Pompa signed over majority interest to IEAH, the horse has remained a side note. If BB runs back to his Derby form in the Haskell I think there is something that could be done by the cast of 'All my children' to redeem themselves and this sport.

Run his ass in the Arc.

Crazy? Maybe. Maybe it's so crazy it's brilliant.

Iavarone could ship Brownie off to Andre Fabre and gear him up for a run at the most prestigious turf race in the world. This could also tip Jackson's hand and commit him to running Curlin in the race.

Dutrow himself has said that he thinks Big Brown is a much better turf horse anyway and it was only desperation for a race that made him try him on the dirt at Gulfstream. Why not have, arguably, the two best American bred horses to come down the proverbial pike in a long time, take a quick jaunt across the pond and complete the exacta? Then ship them both back and do the same in the Classic.

I can hear the mocking cries already. Those sorry souls who think that a victory at the expense of unworthy foes is noteworthy and we are all made less by their dogma.

I don't for a moment think that this idea has the chance of the proverbial snowball in hell but it is an entertaining flight of fancy. A dream that is sadly, too often, dreamt by those lost souls who have not forgotten why we love to watch the horses run...

Your package has been lost...

Photo: Anne M. Eberhardt


UPS does not deliver. Hooters shows up flat. No drugs, no horse.

Dick Dutrow GUARANTEED a win on the walk out to the paddock but Da'Tara intercepted his package and delivered him a big tall cup of Shut the hell up. The last few months Dutrow has been nothing short of abrasive in his assessment of Big Brown's abilities and his equal disdain for the rest of the sport. Big Brown was clearly not himself today and he left his trainer nose deep in a big, deserving bag of shit.

ABC and ESPN were equally classless in their post race coverage, concentrating solely on the loser and giving nothing but short shrift to the winning connections.

The old adage, class matters, applies to more than just the caliber of the horse. The connections should display some as well and Dutrow/IEAH seemed to have forgotten that this sport as well as life is humbling but here and now, at the end of all things, I don't really hold Dutrow's bravado against him.

Dutrow, until today, had the best horse. A maverick, he usually steamrolled through the competition; today just wasn't his day. Most people, dealt a hand like Dutrow's, don't have the brass to walk up and place a bet. Dutrow, called in all his markers and put it all on the line. The dice roll funny for everyone. He will have other days; it's margin call today.

Most people don't like arrogance because it reminds them that they have very little to be arrogant about and the schadenfreude is pervasive. Dutrow called his shot and swung away.

He should not second guess himself or shy away from the media, neither of which I think he will do. I am reminded of a scene from James Goldman's play, The Lion in Winter, when Geoffrey scoffs at Richard while they are waiting for the axe:

Geoffrey: You fool! As if it matters how a man falls down!
Richard: When the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal.

Godspeed Big Brown...may you enjoy the breeding shed.

All right...we'll call it a draw

The legend of King Arthur is well known. A myth0-historic figure, imbued by a moistened bink with the touch of destiny and the promise of a people. He gathers the scattered and listless knights-errant knaves and debauched soldiers-and binds them to the common cause of bringing a society out of the mire and squalor of internecine strife into a golden age.

I don't know any of the connections of Big Brown. I don't know anybody that does know any of the connections of Big Brown. I read the industry rags and I watch the blogrolls so I guess I am as informed as the rest of the herd. The opinions out there are not favorable regarding the connections of the Rule V.6 violator. Michael Iavarone is apparently a small-time, stock hustling pimp. Dick "Babe" Dutrow has seventy-two violations according to the Association of Racing Commissioners International. And Desormeaux...well his only knock is that he MAY have moved a little too early with Real Quiet. Yet here they are, about to crest the summit of racing immortality.

If he wins the Belmont Stakes, Big Brown will race at most two more times. Dutrow has already stated that he likes to give his horses a lot of time between races and the Travers and Classic are well spaced; nothing is gained by running him in any "preps". His Triple Crown should not be asterisked, umlauted or pronounced with a uvular fricative; he ducked nobody and beat them all at level weights (if he wins). He will not, however, be campaigned to promote horse racing but he will definitely be marketed. The people that fall for that though, will disappear as soon as he smells his first teaser mare; they are also the same people-I think-that explain the popularity of American Idol. If he loses, then there will undoubtedly be the discovery of "...an unnamed, non-specific injury that in no way compromised his soundness but for the welfare of the horse will lead to his retirement and a productive and lucrative career in the breeding shed." I don't know anything about quarter cracks or hooves, for that you should read Fran Jurga's blog, but if he does lose and runs poorly, then everyone and their mother will fall on Dutrow like a hypoglycemic Sumo wrestler on a water diet; whether the hoof issue has anything to do with it or not.

Big Brown better win and he should, on paper. There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance and like many things it depends on your perspective. The IEAH/Dutrow exacta has left that line far, far behind but whatever your feelings towards them are, nobody has claimed that they have done anything illegal with this horse. They are arrogant and abrasive-Dutrow was classless in criticizing Servis and Elliott for their run with Smarty Jones-but they have backed up their bravado every time; granted, Kramer dominated a group of kids in karate class but I think you get my point. Yet the question has never been asked of Big Brown; he has never had to look another horse in the eye and dig down within himself to meet the challenge and for that reason Dutrow should strut just a little less dramatically. Bernardini could not answer that question in 2006 and he was a monster, albeit with classier connections, so his defeat was not derided as much as Big Brown's would be.

Big Brown will not save horse racing or his connections and the latter most definitely do not need it. What he can do is give them the second chance that, ultimately, is what everyone wants; the warm embrace of a bed-wetters dream. He can bring horse racing into the twenty-first century, lob the proverbial scimitar of supreme executive power to one man who can gather the errant knights of trainers and owners and join the battle against the dysfunctional hydra that is the NTRA.

Because if something doesn't happen here, now, with this backdrop, then that spindly left front hoof with the 5/8in. quarter crack may as well be the left leg of the Black Knight that Arthur fights at the bridge.

On Galileo and matters of gravity...

When I started this blog, I meant only for it to push me into starting a racing partnership and becoming involved in the industry. I did this solely for myself, with no desire to share this with the world. I don't have the discipline to write or keep a journal and when it comes to actually sitting down and putting something on paper, virtual or otherwise, I have the attention span of a cat on meth; besides, when you see someone's journal you think it might be something you want to read. So where can one set down their thoughts without everyone else trying to rummage through them? The middle of a crowd offers wonderful opportunities for inconspicuousness.

I feel about social networking and those that can't stop talking about it the way most people feel about Bush or the supporting characters in Deliverance. At stores, when I am asked for my phone number and zip-code, I make them up. I had no intention of trying to disseminate this page, link it, delicious it or whatever else the hell people do with this but as with the best laid plans of mice and men...here I am, down here with the rest of you. Does the stink ever wear off?

Racing has issues and they are a myriad; this is not the time nor the place to list them. It is in trouble but that has been the case for the past fifty years. Much has been written recently about Big Brown, the Derby, the gallant Eight Belles and BB's dominance over this years crop. There are cries for changes to the industry or its immediate dissolution. Members of the Algonquin Round Table: CNN, Fox, USAToday, Arianna Huffington and PETA have chimed in with their insider's knowledge of the thoroughbred industry to lend them weight. Drugs and medications,legal or not, are rampant and if history is any indication, the Socratic and somber members of Congress will soon subpoena Big Brown to the hill to testify against Dutrow.

IEAH is a hedge fund. Dutrow is a man with his own demons and it is not my place to judge him, all of us in our own way are after all fighting the alligator that is closest to our ass. What I find bizarre and possibly criminally stupid is Dutrow's public claim that he has no idea what Winstrol does but as long as its legal he will let the vet administer it. What the hell is that? How do you 1) admit that and B)keep employing a man who admits that? As a hedge fund manager, in charge of tens of millions of dollars, how do you let your prime asset receive such indifferent care. If I had Big Brown I would hire tasters for his food, maybe death-row inmates or terminally ill people who are in clinical drug studies. I don't know I'm spit-balling here.

Everyone is talking Triple Crown and how Big Brown will save the sport if he wins it. Maybe he wins, I don't know, he has a good shot. I think I could win an Olympic event if I faced REALLY slow people. What I don't think will happen is that, magically, after the Belmont, tracks across the country will be flooded by patrons lining up at the two dollar window. If he wins, Big Brown will NEVER race again. Iavarone is a hedge fund manager but he is not stupid. If he is and made all that money then I am in the wrong business, that though is an entirely different blog. There is no up side, from a financial standpoint, to racing BB after the Belmont if he wins. Iavarone is not a fan or a purist, whatever platitudes he spits out. Whatever the ramifications to the industry, its fan base, the breeders that like lemmings will line up and the ensuing product, IEAH will make a tidy profit from Big Brown and turn the page. And what about the horse? Big Brown is just doing what he knows, better than anybody else out there this year. He won't get to prove anything by winning at Belmont and then he will have an asterisk placed by his name because he happened to be the best of his generation and owned by someone who didn't have the stones or the character to step up to the line and roll the bones.

Big Brown will probably win and the Algonquin Round Table might interrupt their breaking story of a domestic dispute in a trailer park somewhere to cover the festivities. Many pundits will wax philosophically about how he is the best horse of all time and how horse racing needed him to come along at just this moment, this critical juncture in the space-time continuum. He will be hyped as the long awaited hero. The horse that can save the industry. But when Andrea said 'Pity the land that has no hero.' in Bertolt Brecht's play, Galileo sagely counters, 'Pity the land that needs a hero.'