Poor Life At Ten. After last year’s disastrous Breeders’ Cup, she gets off to a slow start with two lackluster performances and just when it looks like she’s ready to make some noise Cornelio Velasquez pulls a Garrett Gomez and strangles the daylights out of her down the backstretch.

In the replay you’ll see that she gets off to a great start and then at 29 seconds he gets her in a hammer lock until about 56 seconds. One has to wonder what the stretch would have looked like if she would have been allowed to run more freely.

You may remember about Life At Ten that she does her best running when not restrained. Say for example in last year’s Ogden Phipps.

I think Cornelio is an underrated rider in general but admittedly I haven’t been paying close attention recently. Even if he is off his usual good form (and I’m not saying he is, I’m saying I don’t know if he is or not), I’ve never noticed him to be one to fight a front-runner. This had to be instructions from the barn, right? Right.

Pletcher from the NYRA post-race quotes press release:

She didn’t break well but she was able to recover and find a spot there pretty quickly. After that, she was in pretty good shape. The strategy, on paper we felt that Absinthe Minded and Awesome Maria would be laying one-two and Life At Ten would assume the garden spot. The way it broke, Cornelio [Velasquez] had to grab her [Life At Ten] a little bit to get that spot, and in retrospect it would have been better to go on, but he tried to execute the original game plan.

Well, it’s somewhat reassuring that they’re aware the plan didn’t work, but it must speak to their lack in confidence in Life At Ten as she’s shown the ability to rate behind speed and still win, such as last year’s Beldame.

At least they’re committed to running the rest of the year but if I were Candy DeBartolo, I would have moved her to another barn right after the Breeders’ Cup. On the bright side, we may catch a good price on her if/when things fall into place!

Posted by dana on Jun 20 2011    
Filed Under: 2011, Todd Pletcher, Cornelio Velazquez, Racing

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Last year’s participants in the Ladies Riders Challenge at Parx (EBarnes624)

You should know that the second annual Lady Riders Challenge is taking place this Saturday at Parx in conjunction with the Cotillion Stakes (which features a pretty great line up!) / Ladies Day. I only know about it because a reader, who remembered that I had grumbled posted about the lack of coverage of last year’s, was kind enough to let me know.

No doubt John Barnes (the previously mentioned reader) will be there to cover all the action again this year. The Parx events page barely makes mention of it and I’m not really expecting to see any mention in the trades either (sad).

So, if you don’t already have plans for Super Saturday, perhaps you’d like to head over to Parx, apparently it’s not half bad!

Posted by dana on Sep 27 2010    
Filed Under: 2010, Parx, Carol Cedeno, Media, Jocks, Marketing, Racing

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Slew’s Tizzy and Joel Rosario winning the 2008 Native Diver (Charles Pravata)

My beloved Slew’s Tizzy returns to racing today in the Cornhusker at Prairie Meadows! It sort of feels like when your pet runs away from home and comes back several months after you’ve already resigned yourself to their absence.

The last we saw of Slew’s Tizzy he was in the Doug O’Neill barn where he had won the Native Diver in December of 2008 (pictured above) after a string of decent efforts (minus the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile). He had vastly improved with O’Neill, and while enjoyable as a fan, it was also always a bit of concern given that O’Neill is no stranger to drug violations. He ended up on Dan Illman’s disabled list with a stall injury and now has magically landed in the barn of Calder trainer Terrance Oliver.

I don’t know anything about Oliver, other than his win percentage is a dismal .06, his first time with team percentage is an equally dismal .09, his +180 days percentage is a respectable .17 and his dirt percentage is .09. Dirt isn’t Slew’s Tizzy’s preferred surface either, unless it’s muddy.

He’s still racing for Joseph LaCombe, who is also his breeder, so at the very least he hasn’t been dumped somewhere unsavory. He’s also reunited with Robby Albarado, which I take to be a very good sign. Let’s just say I’m cautiously optimistic and glad to know where he is… and of course rooting for him!

Update: He started off a bit slow, got into a good position and then faded about half way through the race. I’ll keep an eye out to see if he turns up on the work tab again. I hope they put him back on synthetics!

Posted by dana on Jun 26 2010    
Filed Under: :), 2010, Charles Pravata, Robby Albarado, Slew's Tizzy, Racing

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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(wendyu) The Homeboykris crew on the walk over, the embodiment of cheerful!

Sure, I could focus on all my horrid plays yesterday and how I stupidly left Ice Box off my tickets, especially since 1) I deliberated between using him and Mission Impazible and 2) I had Paddy O’Prado on my tickets, but I’m going to choose to be cheerful today, after all, it’s not often one calls the Derby winner publicly (so I’m going to enjoy it while I can… and sorry for the long sentence).

Since I’m not blogging a much these days, here are some things I had to say elsewhere about Super Saver… over at Twitter there was a discussion going on re: Super Saver and at least one esteemed colleague (@o_crunk) wasn’t buying him. My thought was this:

SS could pick up the pieces if he rates like he did in Ark Derby and there’s a pace meltdown. least that’s how I look at it

Reading Val’s piece for Hello Race Fans! on pedigree and Derby Distance + the reports out of Churchill that he was looking good in the morning definitely informed my thought process. Over at the other evil social media site, Facebook, I commented to a friend about my choice:

The services of one Mr. Calvin Borel aren’t too shabby either… but more than that, I think he got something out of his last two races and looked to me be getting underway at the end of the race last out. From what I’ve read his breeding suggests the distance should be no problem, which lines up with how I interpreted what I saw. I’m pretty jazzed about his odds too! (editor’s note: before they went south)

(Note: Facebook is so evil in fact that I can’t even directly link to that post!)

So, while I would have liked to have turned that into a nice score, my future wagers kept the weekend from being a total blood bath… and my parade play of Le Grand Cru in the Westchester. I’m now one for one at Belmont!

Also cheery making is that both Oaks and Derby handle were up, despite the massive AmTote crash that effected XpressBet, TwinSpires and a few tracks. On the bright side, at least it was clear on TwinSpires that a bet had gone through or not! On the downside I’m still annoyed over TwinSpiresTV blocking the Churchill simulcast signal. I’m still trying to find out more about that, so far I’ve gathered that Churchill was broadcasting it’s signal and leaving it up to the individual outlets to decide what to do with it, but nothing specifically about TwinSpiresTV.

At any rate, I’m still remaining cheerful… and might even do a couple of more blog posts!

Posted by dana on May 02 2010    
Filed Under: Twinspires, Twitter, 2010, Super Saver, Internet, Churchill Downs, Derby Trail, Triple Crown, Calvin Borel, Kentucky Derby, Racing

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Super Saver and Calvin Borel winning at Churchill in the Kentucky Jockey Club (ChurchillDowns)

There aren’t too many shots of 2010 Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver over at flickr at the moment (unless you count images of yarn)… I suppose that will all change soon enough!

It was another stellar ride by Borel, and yes, Super Saver was my pick!

Congrats to the connections, and see you in two weeks!

LOL at the guy who yells “briiiing it!!” right before the race starts. Could have been one of the owners of Homeboykris?

Posted by dana on May 01 2010    
Filed Under: Churchill Downs, 2010, Super Saver, Kentucky Derby, Todd Pletcher, Derby Trail, Calvin Borel, Racing

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