Borel strikes a pose on the gallop out at Churchill (Kincsem15)

Word is out that Calvin Borel will join David Letterman on the Late Show during Belmont week.

One can only hope that Letterman, who enjoys horseback riding, would be willing to ride with Calvin the way he rode with Madonna in 2005!

The fun starts at 3:37:

Think of the fun the two could have galloping down 53rd street. I doubt Calvin would be phased by Letterman’s race riding technique and could definitely teach him a thing or two. Personally I think there’s potential for comedic genius afoot. Fingers crossed!

Posted by dana on May 22 2009    
Filed Under: Mainstream Media, Celebrities, 2009, TV, Belmont Stakes, Triple Crown, Calvin Borel, Racing

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(Simon Bak)

Today marks the first weekend installment of the HANA pool party, which is the 6th at Hawthorne. The Pretty Jenny is $100k 6F stakes race for state bred 3yo fillies.

Today has been all about errand running and attending to things around GbG manor, so I’ve only done the quickest of looks. That being said this is an interesting race, even though sprints are not generally my favorite types of races to handicap.

There’s plenty of speed of in this race and plenty of horses coming off a decent break. A quick glance at yesterday’s HAW races reveals that in all but one instance, horses who sat off the pace in 6F races won.

With that in mind, Lose None, Miss Fontana, Bow Tie Pasta, Cart’s Zenforus and Happy Henrietta all look plausible. B N Graced N Glory also jumps out on paper with 2 consecutive wins at HAW at 6F, but in the slop.

I’ll wait to take a look at them before I make any decisions but I’m most curious to see B N Graced N Glory, Lose None, Bow Tie Pasta and Happy Henrietta, who has won off a break equivalent to the one she’s returning from today.

As usual, you can pick up free PPs, Thoroughgraph data and picks from Hawthorn’s GM and resident handicapper Jim Miller at HANA. Good luck and have fun!

Update: Bow Tie Pasta took the race by several lengths, followed up by Cart’s Linda, Lose None and Tessie’s Tilbury. Yours truly is now 0-4 in HANA pool party having gone with B N Graced N Glory to win and tri box of B N Graced N Glory, Lose None and Happy Henrietta. There was a touch of drama as #9 Cumulonimble dumped her rider out of the gate was loose on the track. After the race the announcer mentioned she was still loose and now going in the wrong direction, although she was never on camera. An outrider safely grabbed her not too long after the race ended.

Another note, the dumped rider was the tall Brandon Meier that appeared briefly on Jockeys, Win or Die Trying. No word on his condition.

Posted by dana on Apr 25 2009    
Filed Under: 2009, Jockeys TV Show, HANA, Picks, Sprint, Handicapping, You Can Help, 3yo, Racing

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While others have already done a great job discussing yesterday’s coverage of the Lane’s End, I noticed something interesting during the show. And by interesting I mean annoying.

At some point in the show there was an ad for DRF’s Formulator. The ad was funny and stylistically riffed on advertising of yore. An exaggerated vaudeville barker voice-over narrated all of the great qualities of Formulator while retro images intended to be charming, light hearted and funny illustrated the points.

I particularly got a chuckle out of the pig racing shot. Sadly though, there was one visual sentiment that not only hearkened back to the days of yore, but looks as though it’s still firmly entrenched in the days of now. To drive home that Formulator was easy to use “at every skill level”, they flashed an image of two women. Now there’s a selling point, even a woman can use it!

Did they think it was funny or not even think about it? Was it the same sentiment Kenny Mayne espoused during the bazillion hour BC coverage last year, “men wager, women vote” or was it just a light hearted yet unconsciously telling choice? We’ll never know.

Much has been pointed out recently about racing’s reliance on “antiquated stereotypes and frivolity to appeal to women“. Ditto the speculation that airing the Oaks on Bravo could marginalize the Oaks as a “chick race”. How nice to have this bothersome trifecta rounded out by subtly being reminded that we’re also not perceived as being as skillful as our male colleagues… thanks guys!

Don’t get me wrong, I think Formulator is a fine product, after all they did make it easy enough for me to use!

Posted by dana on Mar 22 2009    
Filed Under: Industry, 2009, Daily Racing Form, TV, Ads, Marketing, Grrrr

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Kayla Stra & Jennie C. Green in the winner’s circle with Lucius Antonius (yausser)

I was making my usual rounds this morning when I happened upon this excellent photo set over at flickr of Kayla Stra scoring a win, over Chantal Sutherland no less, Friday at Santa Anita. It was the 4th race, a $25k maiden claimer at 1 mile on the fake stuff.

Lucius Antonius, trained by the also lovely Jennie C. Green (in the white shirt) and owned by Gary Broad (no comment), “stepped to a slim advantage and set pace outside rival, roused and shook free in upper stretch, came in some later and just lasted under urging”, according to the chart.

But you can see it all here, Kyla mentally preparing outside the Jockey’s room, the team approaching the paddock, the pep talk, trying to psych out the opponents, breaking well, and holding off Chantal Sutherland in the stretch. Great stuff! And at least as interesting, if not more so, than anything else that went on in racing this weekend, no?

Speaking of which, check out Geno’s foray into “complaining”, well done and the more the merrier!

It also appears as though Channing Hill gets his first couple of mounts at Santa Anita on this Wednesday in the 5th & 7th.

Posted by dana on Mar 22 2009    
Filed Under: Claimer, 2009, Jockeys TV Show, Kayla Stra, Channing Hill, :), Chantal Sutherland, Maiden, Santa Anita, Racing

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(fauxrealphotos)

Dan Liebman’s post today on Bravo brings up (and over looks) some interesting points. He correctly points out that ESPN “decides for us what is sport and what is not, and what we will be able to watch”, although admittedly this is a construct of media in general.

He puts the icing on the cake by saying:

Apparently, it is more important to find out who is the world’s strongest man than who is the world’s best Thoroughbred.

However, the real missed opportunity in this discussion is main stream marketing or lack of it.

Lower interest in racing can be attributed to several things, among them more choices today for viewers and the fact many core fans are watching on HRTV or TVG, or at a simulcast or off-track betting facility. While HRTV and TVG serve racing’s core, they do little to help cultivate new racing fans. It’s doubtful other, smaller cable networks will either.

I don’t think it matters what channel racing is on as long as it’s marketed, after all, people can’t get interested in what they don’t know about. Look at the success of Jockeys on Animal Planet of all places. Remember how concerned we were with their crazy breakdown-a-palooza promotion? It didn’t matter, the show was success… and it couldn’t have been a success if they had just hoped people would find it. Sound like a familiar approach?

In regards to Bravo, Patrick at Handride argues that positioning racing as cultural phenomenon will be racing’s undoing as far as growth goes. An interesting comment thread ensues that explores the oft debated sport vs. gambling angle. Additionally, the tweet-o-sphere disagreed with him on the cultural phenomenon part. I don’t think it matters one way or another with no mainstream marketing.

Prior to Liebman’s post today, Jason Moran pointed out the World Wide Sports angle here at GbG over the weekend. He makes some great points and in fact he has shared other interesting thoughts about sports coverage here at GbG in the past. The Wide World of Sports idea is particularly interesting because, as several commenters at Bloodhorse point out, racing telecasts that go on for hours are pretty boring. The other side of that coin is what Moran has pointed out before, that NBC knew how to tell stories and fill the seemingly long space between races with interesting, well told stories.

I’m no sports maven, in fact I can emphatically say that I don’t give a shit about sports, but look at the NBA & TNT. Is TNT a sports channel? No, it’s the home of Drama. That’s actually a pretty brilliant hook for any kind of sport or game if you ask me. And guess what, they market it!

I think the bottom line is that, regardless of whether it’s locally or nationally, if we’re really concerned about growth then racing ought to start marketing itself to more than the existing fan base.

Posted by dana on Mar 17 2009    
Filed Under: Becoming a Fan, Industry, 2009, Jockeys TV Show, Twitter, Kentucky Oaks, Internet, Marketing, TV, Dan Liebman, Mainstream Media, Racing

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