Who Do you believe?

The trainer said we got a bad ride. The jockey says the horse never picked up the bit. I personally thought the race was just too long. A variety of reasons for why No Lip came up about 15 feet short on Sunday. However, that 15 feet represented the difference between 1st and 5th and a paltry $90 check. At least Blumin Won and Swift Progress picked up more meaningful checks for their second place efforts over the weekend.

Upcoming races: Angel is all set to run Friday night. On the other hand, barring a bunch of rain, we will scratch Ready to Thrill if an easier spot becomes available over the weekend. We have entered him at least a half dozen times over the last week and took this spot mainly out of frustration and the hope that rain could force the race off the turf.

Upon Further Review

While driving home last night, I realized I forgot the most recent female jockey in our employ. So rather than jeopardizing my shot at the WG HOF, I might as well give the answers to my trivia question:

1) Helen Vanek (Leather N Lace twice @ Tampa)
2) Tammy Piemerini (Chaffed Lips @ Tampa)
3) Helen King (Iron Boy @ Prairie Meadows)
4) Inez Karlsson (Art of Diplomacy @ Hawthorne)
5) Inez Karlsson (Oculuna @ Arlington)

I think that covers all of them. On that same drive, I was putting the list of HOF members together in my head and have come up with the following categories:

Horses (no particular order): Tytus, Silver Peagus, Lite Brigade, Go Go Diablo, Stumbling Block, Starlet Sky, Iron Boy, Dawn Raider, Chief Magistrate, and Leather N Lace.

These members are not necessarily the fastest or highest earners, but they all occupy a special place in the stable for various reasons.

Jockeys: Daniel Centeno and Paul Nolan

Centeno was an automatic first ballot and Nolan was added by the Veterans Committee.

Trainer: Jamie Ness (*)

Ness' plaque needs an (*) because we'll never know for sure what he was feeding the horses to make them run so well, but we cannot ignore the impressive stats he piled up.

Investor/Partner: Mark Kane

While he was not an original member and he isn't the largest investor, Mark's contributions to the stable are numerous. He embodies the spirit of what this investment is supposed to be (he even has the ink on his arm to prove it). He attends all of the races, has traveled across the country to some of these races, and he couldn't care less about his ROI. No one has given our horses more treats in the barn or sponsered more barn tours. He has outfitted a number of folks in WG gear and taken in a couple strays when their racing days were over. Mark is always the first in line outside the winners circle to purchase a beverage for those in attendance. Whenever the business/admin burden annoys me and I think about getting out, he is the one I think about when I buy another horse in hopes of landing the "big one". He plays the lottery and says when he wins, we'll go on a shopping spree.

If that resume doesn't warrant the HOF, there should be no such honor. So the next time you see Mark, give him a nod of appreciation.

Changes / WG Trivia

Swift Progress makes his debut for us on Thursday night. The horse will have a lot on his mind as he deals with a number of changes we are throwing at him. He will try grass and a 2-turn race for the first time; we’re adding blinkers, bumping him up in class and putting a new jockey on his back after spending a few weeks in a new stall. Regardless of how he runs, we probably won’t have a real good idea which of those changes will make the most difference. A lot will depend on the feedback from the new jockey (Lori Keith) – another debut for us. I have personally known Lori for a few years but have never had the opportunity to ride her (wink).

We have had 365 starts as a stable and only had female jockeys on 3 other occasions. Send me an e-mail if you think you know the others. Here are a few hints: you’ll need to go back a few years, the rides were not at Canterbury and one of the jocks rode 2 different horses at 2 different tracks under different last names. Anyone who can tell me the names of the 2 jockeys/3 horses will get an immediate induction into the WG Hall of Fame. It has been a while since we opened the doors to the WG HOF (Stumbling Block was the most recent inductee), so I look forward to hearing any guesses.

Each race was better

The races this weekend pretty much played out like I thought. Angel's race was too rough, Thrill's race was too short and the outside post was a little too much to overcome for No Lip. The results were better with each passing race. We went from ugly to encouraging. I thought No Lip ran too good to lose. The hope is that each of these runners gets one more chance this meet. As it looks now, our next race could be a week from next Thursday when we will be entering Swift Progress a his debut for us.

Take what you can get

It’s getting late in the season at Canterbury and the horse population is dwindling. As such, you can’t get too choosy about the races you enter. None of the 3 races we entered for this weekend are ideal.

The race for Angel came up a little tougher than I thought. That combined with the fact that she is not 100% physically, we may end up scratching out of the race on Saturday morning. Stay tuned to the blog and I will try to post something as soon as possible. For Thrill, we tried to get a race going long, but none of those filled unless we wanted to step up in class. For No Lip, I would have preferred a little more time between races, but this race seems to fit well. Unfortunately, we drew an outside post in a large field.

We’ll hope for the best.

New Business Model

The racing action for the stable was a little light this weekend (3rd place run by Blumin Won), so it gave me a chance to work on some administrative duties. Specifically, I re-negotiated the monthly expenses we pay. The arrangement I was looking for was to shift the mix of fixed/variable costs. If the horses run well, the "commission" costs go up, but if they don't, we'll pay a lot less in fixed expenses. Essentially, it takes a little off the top but raises the floor significantly in a worse-case scenario.

This expense mix gave me the motivation to claim another horse todayfor $5k - a 3 year-old gelding named Swift Progress. He ran an ok 4th today in his 3rd lifetime start. Even with the addition to the stable, the overall fixed costs will be much less than our 4-horse stable under the old expense model. The lower fixed costs will also give us the opportunity to run races during the fall at a number of tracks in the midwest while basing the stable in Illinois and shipping to a handful of tracks within driving distance.

Time will tell if this new model will prove profitable, but I wanted to give it a shot and will re-evaluate the effectivness in a few months.

Mission Accomplished

I have stated numerous times that it is tough to make money racing at Canterbury. Therefore, my goal this year was to simply have fun, win a few races and not get spanked financially. With the couple winners of late, it looks like we will be ok assuming we can unload some of the current stock within the next month. The last 3 horses I bought were strictly for racing at Canterbury. I don’t think any of these can be too successful elsewhere.

It has worked out well that for the last couple of photos, we had a good turnout in the circle and it made for enjoyable evenings. It was especially gratifying last week when No Lip won to re-connect with some family members of one of the founding partners of WG. I have to keep reminding myself that it is nights like Thursday that help offset some of the frustration/embarrassment I go through when a horse runs up the track.

As I write this, I cannot predict what will happen after Canterbury this year. I have a few thoughts rattling around my head, but nothing firm at this point. For now, I will enjoy the next 5 weeks of racing here and we just may be able to squeak out another photo or two.