HORSE RACING ON FRONT PAGE OF NEW YORK TIMES, AND IT’S NOT PRETTY
While we await the Ontario Budget on Tuesday and hope that our racing does not incur any more hits, the problem of the sport’s image is the biggest issue, isn’t it?
This feature is long, and very tough to read, and how disturbing is New Mexico? Today is their biggest race, the $800,000 Sunland Derby and shame on that State.
MANGLED HORSES, MAIMED JOCKEYS
By WALT BOGDANICH, JOE DRAPE, DARA L. MILES and GRIFFIN PALMER
RUIDOSO, N.M. — At 2:11 p.m., as two ambulances waited with motors running, 10 horses burst from the starting gate at Ruidoso Downs Race Track 6,900 feet up in New Mexico’s Sacramento Mountains.
Nineteen seconds later, under a brilliant blue sky, a national champion jockey named Jacky Martin lay sprawled in the furrowed dirt just past the finish line, paralyzed, his neck broken in three places. On the ground next to him, his frightened horse, leg broken and chest heaving, was minutes away from being euthanized on the track.
For finishing fourth on this early September day last year, Jacky Martin got about $60 and possibly a lifetime tethered to a respirator.
The next day, it nearly happened again. At virtually the same spot, another horse broke a front leg, pitching his rider headfirst into the ground. The jockey escaped serious injury, but not the 2-year-old horse, Teller All Gone. He was euthanized, and then dumped near an old toilet in a junkyard a short walk from where he had been sold at auction the previous year.
In the next 24 hours, two fearful jockeys refused their assigned mounts. The track honored two other riders who had died racing. As doctors fought …
INCREDICAT BATTLES HARD IN RETURN
Canadian-bred INCREDICAT set the pace from the rail throughout most of the 6 1/2 furlongs of his 2012 debut outing at Gulfstream and only got tired late, finishing 3rd beaten just 1 1/4 lengths.
The Discreet Cat colt, who had won his debut last fall at Woodbine, upped his Beyer Figure to a best 70.
The fractions for his race were tough but this talented colt was making it look easy to the turn for home. He went 22.17 44.59 1:09.96 and then slipped back a bit through the final time of 1:16.80 .
He is a half brother to stakes winner Stormy Lord, owned by Kinghaven Farms Lessee and trained by Ian Black.
WELL DONE
WENT THE DAY WELL for Team Valor/Motion
New York bred WENT THE DAY WELL, a $15,000 weanling, looked super in the Spiral yesterday at Turfway Park and he posted a 92 Beyer Figure in his 3rd North American start. A recent purchase by Team Valor and Mark Ford, the colt began his career overseas. He is by Proud Citizen out of a Tiznow mare and from the immediate family of Canadian-bred stakes filly SWEET BREANNA.
In fact, WENT THE DAY WELL’S dam, TIZ MAIE’S DAY was bred in Ontario by Dr. John Brown’s SPRING FARM, was a $60,000 yearling purchase at the CTHS sale by John Hassett in 2005 but she never raced. This is her first foal.
The Mark Casse stable did not have much luck with a trio of runners: Lockout was 4th in the Hansel, Dynamical 4th in the Rushaway and STEALCASE, who was in the Spiral, ran his usual Beyer Figure of 77 but was beaten 8 lengths.
Went the Day Well, by Proud Citizen
Wendy Woolley/EquiSport photo
Florence — There is still so much for Went the Day Well to accomplish before he can be mentioned in the same breath as his stablemate Animal Kingdom, a fact that is certainly not lost on his connections.
But if trainer Graham Motion thought the comparisons were coming quickly before Saturday’s running of the Grade III Vinery Racing Spiral Stakes, he and owner Team Valor now know they’re going to spend a good chunk of the next six weeks comparing the lightly raced son of Proud Citizen to the 2011 Kentucky Derby winner.
Racing fans who missed last year’s edition of the $500,000 Spiral saw a near replay on Saturday when Went the Day Well put Team Valor’s colors in the winner’s circle for a second straight season by taking the 11⁄8-mile test by 31/2 lengths at Turfway Park.
To say the Spiral has been good to Team Valor and Motion would be an understatement. Last year, their then-unproven colt Animal Kingdom earned his first graded-stakes win
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/03/24/2124996/went-the-day-well-convincing-in.html#storylink=cpy
MARK MY WORD! he’s too good in Jamaica, mon
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/sports/Mark-My-Word-prophetic-in-Eros-Trophy_11113048
