June 5, 2010

I am a little late blogging today, simply because I wasn’t able to focus on what I wanted to say.  For those of you who listen to Race Day Las Vegas, you know that I am picking Fly Down as my primary Key horse, First Dude, Uptowncharliebrown and Ice Box as my secondary Key horses and then sprinkling ins Stay Put and Spangled Star.   so teh pbasic structure is 1 x 3 x 5 then 1 x 5 x 3, then on the next phase I will be playing 3 x 1 x 5 and 5 x 1 x 3.  with this structure their will be more money going through the the First Dude, Uptowncharlliebrown and Ice Box then STay Put and Spangled Star.  But Fly Down must finish first or 2nd to cash, so the positions is very clearly a version of a simple win/place wager.

The handicapping conforms to the basic concept of the Belmont, that it’s more of a trainer’s race.  the ability to prep a horse properly for the Belmont is a unique skill that few excell, while most flounder at it!  Zito’s record in the Belmont is only 2nd to the great Woody Stephens, at least in my lifetime.  As most of you will remember, Woody Stephens won 5 consecutive Belmonts, a record that will stand alongside, Johnny Unitas’s 45 consecutive games with a touchdown pass (some MIT math wiz’s say this is the number 1 record in sports history), Joe Dimaggio’s 56 game hitting streak, and one that I like, Byron Nelson’s 113 consecutive ‘made” cuts.  In Lord Byron’s day, the cut was just the top 20, unlike today in which it’s the top 1/2 generally.  The interesting thing about Woody is every year he had to pony up with a NEW pony.  Byron Nelson was able to use the same swing, and Johnny Unitas always had Raymond Berry, John Makcey, Lenny Moore and Orr to throw to and Dimaggio always had himself to rely on.  But in Woody’s case, he had to find a way to train a specific horse, to accomplish the deed and he had to keep the horse safe and sound while racing him and training him to win the race.  Nothing short of a miracle.  To me of all the records ever considered this one stands like Colossus over the Rhodes of other great records…  Nicky Zito has demonstrated his own greatness at this race to earn some special respect, so when he comes into the race with a horse as attractive looking as Fly Down, well it’s easy for me to just pull the trigger, especially when he is not the favorite with this horse, he’s the favorite with the other horse, Ice Box….  

Its’ Belmont time and it wouldn’t be the Belmont for me if I didn’t wax a little nostalgic one more time for Affrimed and Alydar.  If horse racing should every experience another race to compare with their edition of the Belmont in 1978,  I will have lost all my words….  Just remember how many times Alyday made Affirmed run as hard as he possibly could, as far as he could and in the end their was only a fraction of an inch between them.  This time it was for the Triple Crown for Affirmed and redemption for Alydar.  The ultimate “an inch is worth a mile” was on display at the Belmont in 1978…

Good Luck…