“Horse racing again has to repeat mantra wait til next year'” plus 3 more

Horse racing again has to repeat mantra wait til next year'
Trainer D. Wayne Lukas would like to see stronger leadership in horse racing: Preakness Insider
First weekend of horse racing in Aberdeen
First weekend of horse racing in Aberdeen

Horse racing again has to repeat mantra wait til next year'

Posted: 15 May 2010 06:48 PM PDT

PHOTOS () —

By Bob Ford

The Philadelphia Inquirer

(MCT)

BALTIMORE — Make that 33 years and counting in the wait for horse racing's next superstar, at least as defined by the Triple Crown series for three-year-olds.

When the next crop convenes in Louisville on the first Saturday in May 2011, it will have been 33 years since Affirmed outdueled Alydar through a fabulous spring in 1978 to become the 11th Triple Crown champion.

The Preakness is always the turning point, the hinge race in which the Kentucky Derby champion announces himself as something special — setting up a dramatic conclusion at the Belmont Stakes — or fades into the small type of the record book.

Super Saver, an easy winner over the sloppy track of Churchill Downs in the Derby two weeks ago, tried to repeat that performance on Saturday at Pimlico Race Course and simply didn't have enough to do it.

Instead, it was Derby favorite Lookin At Lucky, bounced and battered in that race, coming around to win the Preakness. It was a classic battle down the stretch, but Super Saver wasn't in it.

Lookin At Lucky didn't deny Super Saver a bid for the Triple Crown. Seven horses finished in front of the Derby winner, who faded to eighth place after sitting in perfect position on the final turn.

"He just came up empty," said jockey Calvin Borel. "He ran so hard in the Derby. He's not a big horse ... he's a good horse."

There are worse things to say, and Super Saver will always be a Kentucky Derby champion, but that will probably remain the first line of his biography.

"It happens," Borel said.

The Lookin At Lucky camp, led by trainer Bob Baffert, knows how things happen at the races. Lucky might be a great horse, but he hasn't been a lucky one. He was bumped around in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile last year and had a rough trip in his last Derby tune-up, the Santa Anita Derby.

His worst luck came at the Derby draw, when Lookin At Lucky was assigned the No. 1 post, pinned against the rail with 19 other horses trying to cut him off for racing position.

"I wanted to scratch the horse when we got that post," Baffert said Saturday. "I couldn't get into the Derby. I told my wife, 'I'm not feeling it. I think the 1-hole is going to kill us.' "

He was right, and his first inclination was to ship the horse back to California and get off the Triple Crown merry-go-round. But when Lucky bounced back quickly from the Derby disaster, Baffert started to think about Baltimore.

By the time Saturday arrived, Baffert was into it, and he knew he had a good horse with a favorable post position, and a new jockey who might help change the luck.

Less than an hour before the race, while the other trainers stayed in the shadows of the Stakes Barn watching their horses, Baffert was out in the sunshine, chasing around his young son, Bode, and taking some time to meet Olympic ski champion Lindsey Vonn.

"Hey, has anybody got a camera?" Baffert called out, wanting a picture of Bode — named for another Olympic skier, Bode Miller — and Vonn. It turned out that someone had a camera, and Baffert got the picture he wanted, and everything else he wanted on Saturday.

Baffert replaced jockey Garrett Gomez with young Martin Garcia for the Preakness. His instructions for Garcia were simple: Save ground on the first turn, get around to the backstretch in good position, and then the race is yours to decide.

Garcia did all that. Lucky sat in a stalking pack behind First Dude and Super Saver for the first three-quarters of a mile, hanging with the group through quick early fractions before making his winning move.

When one of the leading horses began to fade around the final turn, the surprise was that it was Super Saver and not First Dude, a 24-1 longshot. That's the way it went, though, with Super Saver running out of gas and First Dude hanging around to duel with Lookin At Lucky and finish second.

It was an honest race on a beautiful day, and Pimlico, which was recently sold to a group that includes Penn National Gaming Inc., rebounded nicely from an attendance setback a year ago.

When Pimlico ended the practice of allowing infield patrons to bring their own alcohol, the party went from a roar to a mumble, with 34,000 fewer paying customers in 2009 than the previous year.

The policy stayed in place this year, but infield ticket prices were cut and the patrons were allowed to purchase a bottomless beer mug for an additional $20. That appeared to be a popular decision, with track attendance up 18,000, going from 77,850 to 95,760. It might not be indicative of the popularity of horse racing, but beer is still a solid favorite.

In the end sometimes, it's all about the party. For racing, however, the annual Triple Crown waiting party came to an end on Saturday. Super Saver wasn't always going to be Super this year, and Lookin At Lucky wasn't always going to be unlucky.

One of these years, certainly, a horse will come along to create a very big party. But not this year. And it's been 33 of them now.

___

Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer's World Wide Web site, at http://www.philly.com/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

_____

PHOTOS (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099):

PREAKNESS

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Trainer D. Wayne Lukas would like to see stronger leadership in horse racing: Preakness Insider

Posted: 15 May 2010 05:19 AM PDT

By Associated Press sports staff

May 15, 2010, 8:10AM

APD. Wayne Lukas

BALTIMORE -- Trainer D. Wayne Lukas has no shortage of opinions about the state of horse racing. He will gladly expound on any topic, at the drop of his familiar cowboy hat.

After the discussion shifted away from his two long shots in today's Preakness -- 10-1 Dublin and 30-1 Northern Giant -- Lukas focused on the leadership void in the sport.

The National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the sport's league office, exerts very little control over individual racetracks. The very existence of the NTRA is threatened by the recent decision of several tracks, led by Churchill Downs, the home of the Kentucky Derby, to withdraw from the organization.

Lukas would like to see a stronger central body, similar to the NFL, and pointed to former baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth as the kind of chief executive racing needs.

"The NTRA, I think, is history," Lukas said. "I think the bell tolled this past week when Churchill and those tracks did not go back in. If I were those guys [NTRA], I wouldn't be putting meat in my freezer or taking my dry cleaning out."

Ryan fearless: Trainer Derek Ryan has no fear when it comes to running 15-1 shot Schoolyard Dreams in the Preakness.

The only 3-year-old who gave Ryan pause was Eskendereya. The dominant winner of the Wood Memorial beat fourth-place Schoolyard Dreams by 111/4 lengths at Aqueduct.

With Eskendereya retired following a leg injury in the week leading to the Kentucky Derby, Ryan feels his colt stacks up well against the rest of the field, including Super Saver."

Acting Happy surprises: Acting Happy was the surprise winner in the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes. Acting Happy, ridden by Jose Lezcano, went off at 10-1 in the Grade 2 race for 3-year-old fillies.

Diva Delight and C C's Pal appeared to click heels in the far turn, a collision that caused two jockeys to fall off their mounts. Kent Desormeaux, who was behind the mishap on Seeking the Title, was dumped from his horse and Julien Leparoux was tossed from Diva Delite. Neither jockey appeared to be seriously injured.

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First weekend of horse racing in Aberdeen

Posted: 15 May 2010 08:14 AM PDT

The Associated Press | Posted: Saturday, May 15, 2010 9:00 am | (0) Comments

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ABERDEEN -- The 2010 parimutuel horse racing season at the Brown County Fairgrounds in Aberdeen begins Saturday.

Races are planned for Saturday and Sunday, beginning at 1:30 p.m. each day. The season ends on Memorial Day, May 31.

Parimutuel horse racing in South Dakota is held only in Fort Pierre and in Aberdeen.

Weekend races at the Stanley County Fairgrounds in Fort Pierre concluded last weekend.

Posted in News, Local, State-and-regional on Saturday, May 15, 2010 9:00 am

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First weekend of horse racing in Aberdeen

Posted: 15 May 2010 03:19 AM PDT

ABERDEEN, S.D. (AP) — The 2010 parimutuel horse racing season at the Brown County Fairgrounds in Aberdeen begins Saturday.

Races are planned for Saturday and Sunday, beginning at 1:30 p.m. each day. The season ends on Memorial Day, May 31.

Parimutuel horse racing in South Dakota is held only in Fort Pierre and in Aberdeen.

Weekend races at the Stanley County Fairgrounds in Fort Pierre concluded last weekend.

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Horse Racing

Saturday, May 15, 2010