i couldn't face it

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It was due to start raining for real. I needed to go to the store, needed to get compost for my casks full of bothersome roses. Beside getting the snot beat out of them in the late hail storms earlier this year, they are getting all full of rust and acting wan and disinterested again. Compost always fixes everything that ails them. I don't like roses. I like pictures of them, and the kind that creep up and grow on your roof are pretty damn cool, but they have thorns and they are fussy as hell. But mostly I just couldn't stand the pressure of my romantic ideals bumping up against real life today.

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love, 99
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better than beesabohl, no matter how berry berry goot

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I think I am going to have to get my ass to some bar with a big screen tv and demand they tune it to ESPN2 so I can SEE this. I'm gonna hafta take a chill pill. My nerves are shot already. My stress score is COMPLETELY off the charts and I have been a wreck in front of every race since Eight Belles got put down, but I can't stand the thought of missing what might be about THE most momentous moment in thoroughbred racing history... especially since Zenyatta's trainer started out as an assistant trainer for one of our very first race horses. I'd love to give you the particulars. It's a GREAT story, but that would identify my mother and she'd die of embarrassment if you connected her with me, and there wouldn't be any way around it to tell that story the right way.

It was a horse I named. He went off the favorite EVERY race because his name made EVERYONE very happy. He lost every race by a nose because EVERYONE in the stands would be screaming his name, and EVERY goddam time he would turn his head to look up in the stands... no, no, worse than that... he'd crane his neck to look up at the stands at his adoring public... and another horse would just manage to poke his nose across the finish line right where our horse's head was already SUPPOSED to be.

Struth.

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love, 99
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our horse won again today

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She is unbeaten in four starts. I'd show you the inelegant proof, but that would mean I'd have to stop badmouthing my mother AND people might get the idea she's responsible for ME. Buddhas forfend! Anyway, the filly manages to blast past everyone else on the field every time, except she CANNOT run straight. She weaves all over the track. It's nerve-racking as hell, and keeps getting us inquiries after the races. She needs a damn LANE. She's starting to win money that is getting on toward serious dough... so she'll probably break a leg next outing to insure my future as a bag lady.

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drosselmeyer?

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I don't think we have any Thoroughbreds capable of winning the Triple Crown anymore. We barely have any capable of lasting through their three-year-old season. And since, on top of everything else, the real stars of their three-year-old season are ALWAYS immeeeeediately retired to stud, this is starting to point to the veracity of Darwin's theory... only more accelerated than he thought.

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well, for sure my mom will be pleased

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Baffert has once again been rewarded for being sweet to her.

For my part, I decided I just couldn't take getting het up again about the risks of lethal injury. So now I can go off and look at the race since it seems nobody needed euthanizing on the track today. I am going to try to take the same approach for the Belmont. Truly, it's best this way.
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And, well, not that spectacular an outing. I really hate it when everyone looks this tired at the last turn. I feel they should be at full steam as they're crossing the finish line, and I really haven't been seeing that lately. When the track is a flippin' bog like at Churchill Downs the other day, you can sorta see it, but otherwise, pfeh, how classy is it to win the Preakness while barely able to pick up a foot for the next stride?
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i think i have to give up on horse racing

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I have been looking through all the top horses' bloodlines and there isn't a one of them who doesn't have just shitloads of the Native Dancer genes in them. Same as last year. Every horse in the race... maybe every Thoroughbred by now... has too much of this dazzling bloodline that runs too strongly to WEAK bones. I stand firmly in my conviction that the Jockey Club should open up the stud book to let in some Akhal-Teke stallions. They're leaner, with very strong legs, fast and the closest living descendants of the Turkoman Horse, one of which was a foundation stallion for the Thoroughbred breed, and... well... I'm starting to stress again... SOMEONE has GOT to get smart about this.

Eskendereya was a serious favorite for today's race, winning everything scarily well, but is chock-full of Northern Dancer [out of a Native Dancer mare] and a bunch of other closely-related horses from that same line, and, yep, they had to scratch him from the Derby because of a leg "filling". I'm very glad they did. Saved us from witnessing another Eight Belles tragedy. Maybe the assholes will let him grow before they send him out pounding on the track again... gelded....

OR, all Thoroughbred racing should be moved back a year, not let them start at all until they're three, and wait to put FOUR-year-olds in the big races. I don't think it is that they NEVER get strong. It's just that they're not fully-formed this early and people are too goddam greedy.

Maybe I shouldn't worry. Maybe they will have inbred so much by next year that the foals will just crumble before they are even weanlings.
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he did it in the florida derby too

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Ice box would seem to be a come from behind in the mud kind of guy. He did it at Florida and ALMOST nailed it in Kentucky. He almost didn't in Florida and, if you watch, you can see his head was waaay in the air for the first half of his run. I can't remember seeing that before. I've seen them start gawking at the stands or zigzagging when the jockey has put the petal to the metal, but I don't remember ever seeing one with his nose in the air like that while running dead out. Jumpers do that when boxing toward a hurtle, but I think what's up with Ice Box is that he's just a bit greener than he should be right now. Probably a regular neon-brained colt who's just not in the groove yet.

Or, don't listen to me. I've always been a sucker for the come-from-behind winners... I mean waaaaay behind. It takes all kinds of horse to do that. Granted, this usually means that they can't do it if there's too much speed for too much distance, but the ones who do these in such hot company can do it any day of the week.

I've spent an hour looking for the most spectacular of these wins ever, but I'm going senile and can't remember the name or the race. It was huuuuuge... and I can see it in my mind's eye like it was yesterday... but I haven't been able to dig up the specifics enough to share it here.
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Well, and I don't like his legs. He's got a heck of a lot of that Native Dancer weak legs syndrome blood in him too... not forgetting that even where Native Dancer wasn't in the mix, the same stallions and broodmares who went into Native Dancer went into the other horses in his bloodline... and... you can see it in his legs.
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super saver?

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Sounds like a damn catalog entry....

Only photo I've seen of the race so far is too demoralizingly muddy to bother with. Very handsome colt, though, and solid Buckpasser stock, with a much lighter dosage of Native Dancer horses, so that's a relief. I can now hope he gets all three and not be so worried his legs will blow up.
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Holy fuck! The most thrilling part was seeing Ice Box go into hyperdrive from the back of the pack—utterly slimed—for second... I swear, given half a second longer, he'd've won by twenty lengths, he was going so fast! Good Christ on a Crutch! On that AWFUL bog of a track, that animal was traveling. I'm gonna have to pick him for the Belmont. THAT fast at the end of a mile and a quarter, means for dead certain he's got the distance. Probably not the sprint for the Preakness, but, whoa... he was going so fast that even though I knew Super Saver won it, I thought Ice Box was going to put him away.

Yipes.
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Ouch! I gotta take that back. Ice Box has the sprint all over everybody. Dammittalltoheck! Shit! He should've won today. We would have had the Triple Crown at last.
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Whull, unless Eskandereya gets back in, that is....

But, really, now, we gotta root for the pretty horsie with the stupid name.
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we gotta root for lookin at lucky

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Since Eskendereya was scratched, and I have to be relieved because I'd've been dying of anxiety about him living through it, my mother tells me that we must root for Baffert's horse, because Baffert is always nice to my mother, and that counts on the odds.

Except... heavy sigh... it appears Lookin at Lucky has more Native Dancer in his pedigree even than Eskendreya has, so I'm back on the hook. Sidney's Candy, somehow, doesn't do it for me, and I wish he would because he's got sturdier, if less classy, bloodlines. I swear, I'm already getting heartburn.

On top of everything, the track's a total mess....
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zenyatta

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Just thrilling. A truly historic moment.

[Here's just the race, without the post race blather....]

ho-lee jumpin' jehosephat!!!!!! ZENYATTA!

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What a day! Zenyatta, the mare, just won the Classic in absolutely boggling style. Dead last most of the way, against monster good colts, and blew past them at the end like they were stopped.

Fucking aaaaaawesome!

Fourteen for fourteen. First time this distance. Beat a bunch of monsters. Holy shiiiiit! Astoundingly good day at the races.

I'm going to be looking for the YouTube of this one tonight, for sure. Just outrageous. Big freakout at the gate. Had to scratch the maniac and back everybody else out for a reset. Doom. Doom. Messing with everyone's game... and... whoa! Zenyatta just waltzed through it.

I was pounding and slapping my desk and screaming.... My heart's still pounding.

[They just showed the race from the camera that followed her wire to wire, and it was a thing of beauty. She starts out lumbering and boxing and bouncing, and the jockey's just kicking back for a smoke. Then you see her switching back and forth between the normal gallop and the back hooves digging the track in unison, jockey enjoying a beer and fumbling around for the remote. And then, and then, suddenly it looks as though he's riding a horse finally, but just riding, not really doing anything and Zenyatta's smoothed out and those hindquarters just hammering with an incredible mixture of force and elegance. Finally, their heads go down simultaneously and they just fly past everyone, using whatever hole there is in any lane, ending up clear on the outside and going away.... Easy as pie. The crowd was batshit crazy, roaring so loudly I think I could have heard them from here if I hadn't been screaming even louder.]

BTW, IN CASE YOU DON'T KNOW, THE BEST RACEHORSES FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD COME FOR THE BREEDERS' CUP RACES.

Mine That Bird, this year's Kentucky Derby winner, was dead last. So we're not talking about just any old win here. We are talking about an historic moment. It doesn't get any better than this.

Daily Racing Form

National Thoroughbred Racing Association special

NTRA stats [...without earnings update for today's five-million-dollar purse. You can get slow-loading video of this race on this page too.]

Very slow-loading video of race here....

[Bred in Kentucky by Maverick Productions Ltd., Zenyatta, who is out of the Kris S. mare Vertigineux, boosted her earnings to $5,474,580 with her 14th victory from as many starts.]

it's breeders' cup weekend

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... and you can watch online. Easy to sign up and lots of topnotch Thoroughbreds to ogle.

This is, without a doubt, my mother's biggest deal of the year. Nothing unglues her from it, and she has dreamed of having one of the horses she's bred win here for decades and decades. After all that effort she really does get checks a few times a year from one of her horses winning something... it's just never very much. Her very last race horse, the one she's running and going to use as a broodmare if she does well, has won both of her starts. The problem is: she keeps getting minor injuries between races and has to lay off until she's healed. I figure this will end up producing a nice completely solidly developed race horse and she can then win a bunch of races and then go on to produce a bunch of extremely valuable foals... making me an heiress at last....

[Yipes! This is some transcendental horse racing today. Goldikova knocked me out! And Conduit just blew my mind too. Big day for coming from the back of the pack late bids... which are the most exciting kind.]

guess birdstone's stud fee is going through the roof

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Yep, book full at $10,000 this year, and I bet it'll be much more for 2010....

rachel alexandra

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The filly whups their asses. No Triple Crown again this year.

Great race! But Mine That Bird's jockey lost it, not Rachel winning it. That was not smart. You can't use your usual tactic in the Preakness, because it is shorter. You have to give up as much late speed as you can because the earlier speed can still outrun you if you don't. ALL that prevented MTB from winning it handily was the jockey not putting him up further in the pack, even on the way outside, right away.

But this filly is definitely hot shit.

Hope she stays sound and hope she makes a good broodmare.

preakness

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Old Uncle Dave is rooting for the spectacular filly, but I'm always rooting for the Derby winner because I want another Triple Crown. You just have to hope for it if you believe in horseflesh, even if you love the other horses too.

before he got all muddy and glorified

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Mine That Bird was just in line to provide a nice return on almost no investment, but now he may end up becoming the next John Henry, a gelding to break the hearts of Thoroughbred breeders everywhere.

[Slightly better video of race, but the guy calling the race couldn't have done a worse job. I know he wasn't watching Mine That Bird, but you'd think at least he'd have noticed the leaders getting passed so spectacularly before he was already five lengths up.]

does law enforcement do ANYTHING beside lock up poor people anymore?

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I get emails about this because people know I'm pretty crazy to get to the bottom of this one too, and at least they've dropped the reporting of vague nonstories tending so heavily to lies, but it's still not satisfactory by any stretch. I suppose we do have to wait for the full toxicology reports, but still! WHAT are the cops doing? Did they just let a bunch of possible perps blow town? I think they did! They don't nab you for anything anymore unless your gib is cut in the precise way they are conditioned to identify as criminal. That still means your skin is the wrong color, or your means of support is too invisible, or you're in the wrong section of town. I don't know. Maybe they're too busy staking out the crime scenes from murder/suicides to do any investigations. But, honestly, maybe they just don't question anybody about anything anymore. Maybe they just shoot you with their taser when you disagree with them and haul you off to the slammer, even when there's no excuse for it at all. Why bother doing this brainiac stuff when you can just be a thug and get paid the same?

i still say we open up the thoroughbred stud book

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Get some legs back on our racehorses.

he made it out alive

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too many are dying

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