Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance : Brooklyn Backstretch

Reversal of Fortune: Hirsch Jacobs's Searching

cdawahare — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:31:00 GMT

By Teresa Genaro of Brooklyn Backstretch

This Ones for Phil's victory at Gulfstream in the Sunshine Millions Dash over the weekend has occasioned much conversation about the horse's massive improvement. How could this horse have run this race? What's with the trainer change? Oh, that Dutrow again-look what he's done.

On websites and bulletin boards, the chatter, the accusations proliferate, detractors and defenders rushing to promote their views.

What, I wonder, would folks have made of Searching?

At age two, Searching (War Admiral - Big Hurry, by Black Toney) made thirteen starts but never made it to the winner's circle. She finished second once and third six times. William Robertson tells us what happened next:

As a three-year-old (in 1955), she resumed her frustrating pattern. Seven straight times she was in the money without winning the main part, and after she finished second five successive times owner Ogden Phipps sold her to Hirsch Jacobs for $15,000. Naturally, Searching won first out for her new owner.

Not too long before this, Jacobs had made headlines when he claimed Stymie for $1,500 and subsequently trained him to a Hall of Fame career, during which Stymie won over $900,000. Apparently for Hirsch Jacobs, lightning did strike twice.

Fourteen months after Jacobs purchased Searching, there was no trace of the 0-20 maiden of the previous year, as noted by James Roach in the New York Times:

There's a new pet in Hirsch Jacobs' barn. She's a 3-year-old filly, and her name is Searching.

When a visitor goes to her stall, she lifts a front foot in greeting and then shifts her weight and lifts the other one. It's a pleasing bit of business.

Also pleasing to members of the Jacobs family is the way Searching has learned to pick ‘em up and put ‘em down in a race. In today's Saratoga feature...she won for the sixth time since Jacobs bought her for $15,000 last June.

At the time of her purchase, Searching was a nonwinner...For the Jacobs family...she has collected $22,650 in a little more than two months.

Before too long, trips to the winner's circle in major stakes races became a matter of course for Searching and her connections: At three, the filly won the Vagrancy and the Gallorette; at four, the Diana, the Maskette, the Top Flight, and the Correction; at five, the Distaff and the Gallorette (again); at six, the Diana (again), the Molly Pitcher, the Matriarch, and the Correction (again).

On her first victory in the Diana, in 1956, James Roach wrote:

As every racetracker knows, Jacobs is the man who holds the international record for being lucky as a horse-purchaser. He claimed Stymie for $1,500 and won more than $900,000 with the old boy.

Slightly more than a year after being purchased as a perpetual loser, Searching had fifteen wins, including five stakes races, to her credit.

Two years later, Searching won her second Diana, and by this time turf writers were acknowledging not only her astonishing record, but her personality:

Searching, a little mare with a streak of gameness, became the twentieth winner of the $27,250 Diana Handicap today...Searching weights only 950 pounds and stands fifteen hands high. She won the race in 1956 and was beaten a head by Pardala last year. (Conklin)

Searching carried the top weigh of 123 pounds, giving seven pounds to the runner-up Endine, and eleven to Rare Treat, who finished third.

Between the ages three and six, Searching hit the board in twenty-five stakes races, making a total of 89 lifetime starts and compiling a record of 25 - 14 - 16, earning $327,381. She bore eight foals--seven winners, three of them stakes winners-and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1978. Not bad for a horse who broke her maiden in her 21^st start.

An 0 for 20 filly moving from one well-known trainer (Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons) to another (Hirsch Jacobs), utterly reversing her winless form and beginning a career that would land her in the Hall of Fame. Imagine the conversations if that happened today...

Sources:

Conklin, William R. "Searching Defeats Endine by Half-Length in Diana Handicap at Saratoga." New York Times. 21 Aug 1958. 16 Jan 2008.

Roach, James. "Searching, 5 - 1, Saratoga Victor." New York Times. 10 Aug. 1955. 16 Jan. 2008.

Roach, James. "Searching Triumphs By Two Lengths in $28,000 Diana Handicap at Saratoga." New York Times. 23 Aug 1956. 16 Jan 2008.

Robertson, William H.P. The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America. New York: Bonanza Books, 1964.

Teresa Genaro writes regularly about New York racing at Brooklyn Backstretch.

Who's Writing About Racing?

cdawahare — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:21:00 GMT

Courtesy of Teresa Genaro, Brooklyn Backstretch

Last August, Jessica Chapel of Railbird and I were invited by Seth Merrow of Equidaily to appear on his show on Capital OTB to discuss how the Internet is affecting the relationship between racing and its fans. Among the questions he asked: "Do you consider yourself a journalist?"

The answer, of course, is no. Journalists are professionals, trained in a craft, adhering to practices and ethics and standards. Journalists are usually paid for their work.

A blog is defined by Merriam-Webster as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer." I'm not particularly fond of the word "blog"; it sounds ugly, for one, all those hard consonants, and it seems to me that it's becoming an increasingly inaccurate way to describe the various sites about horse racing, most of which are hardly personal journals but are, rather, stories and analysis and reporting, along with those reflections, comments, and hyperlinks to which Merriam-Webster refers.

And it's here where the lines between blogging (for lack of a better word-maybe "Internet reporting," a term suggested to me last summer?) and journalism begin to blur. Traditional journalism is abandoning racing; I am lucky to live in a city in which two newspapers cover racing daily, but most people can't find anything about racing in their local-or national-papers. More and more, racing fans are turning to the Internet, to the uncredentialed writers, to get their news about the sport they love.

And that's both good news and bad news. It's good news because racing is being covered in ways that traditional journalism can't; there are sites dedicated to specific tracks, to racing overseas, to equine hoof care, to handicapping, to history, and no newspaper is going to fund that sort of coverage. If you're a racing fan, chances are you can find a site-probably several--that suits your needs and your tastes.

It's good news because people like me don't have to worry about editors telling us what we can write about. If I want to write 1500 words on a race run a hundred years ago, I can. If I want to take a few days off, I can. If I want to post three times a day, I can.

There's a lot of bad news, though, too. Most of us don't have the investigative journalistic chops or connections (or the time, as most of us have full-time jobs) to dig deeply into the stories that laid-off journalists would cover; we don't have the credibility based on experience that would encourage those in the racing industry to talk to us; we don't have editors to keep us on track and make sure that our stories are accurate.

I was recently at the track on a day when two horses were injured. I knew that inquiries to vets and stewards and other officials at the track weren't going to get me any answers, so I watched and waited as the two reporters in the press box worked the phones and visited the jocks' room to find out the status of the horses and their riders. And when they found out that the jocks were all right and that the horses weren't, they shared their information with me.

They could do what I couldn't: get reliable, confirmed information from official sources. I could do what they couldn't: post that reliable, confirmed information immediately, so that fans watching from home, wondering what had happened, could find out right away, not having to wait until the next day's papers. The situation was, it seemed to me, a promising example of how journalists and bloggers can work together in the service of providing important information about this sport.

Bloggers differ from journalists in another important way: for the most part, we don't get paid for the writing that we do. Many of us have benefitted from the blogs begun by mainstream media, such as the Blood-Horse's Blog Stable or The Rail at the New York Times, but that benefit isn't financial, at least not directly. The publications get a variety of voices writing on a variety of topics, without having to pay them; we get opportunities, exposure, and a larger readership.

This is not likely a model that can sustain itself; writers won't always work for free, and there will be too many stories that require the skill, experience, and expertise of professional journalists. And racetracks need to figure out where they want bloggers to fit into their landscapes. A number of tracks credential bloggers-some internet writers get full press credentials, others partial. I don't know how individual tracks make decisions about whom they credential, but it would make sense for track press offices to establish some criteria, so that they're not making ad hoc decisions every time a blogger requests a media pass. Racetracks have a valuable opportunity to increase the coverage of their sport, and they should figure out how to take advantage of that opportunity while making sure that the coverage is responsible and reliable.

For now, mainstream media and non-traditional writers seem to be forging a fragile affiliation, one that can probably work for both parties in the near term, while racing, journalism, and new media figure out just exactly what the landscape can and should look like going forward.

Teresa Genaro writes regularly about (mostly) New York racing and racing history at Brooklyn Backstretch

Why We Should Watch the Ladies Handicap

cdawahare — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:56:00 GMT

Teresa Genaro, Brooklyn Backstretch

I live in a city that takes unabashed glee in the evisceration of its physical history. Tourist and natives alike are hard-pressed to discover any remnants of the Dutch and British settlements that settled Manhattan; little is left of the glory of the Gilded Age; and even the more recent bohemian period is barely discernible in Greenwich Village. It's not only past generations who don't recognize their New York; decade to decade, even year to year, the fundamental character of neighborhoods changes, with ex-residents left bewildered by the disappearance of the familiar. Penn Station? Gone? Ebbets Field? Vanished.

Fortunately, racing fans in New don't have to look quite as hard for evidence of the sport's past. While no trace of the Jamaica, Jerome Park, Morris Park, and Sheepshead Bay racetracks remains, Belmont has been on its site since 1905; Aqueduct in existence since 1894; and parts of the clubhouse at Saratoga date to 1864, the second year of its meet.

Perhaps most prominently, though, racing history lives on in the races themselves, many of which have been run for more than a hundred years. There are races named for the founders of New York racing: the Travers, the Woodward, the Jerome, the Whitney, the Belmont. There are races named for the horses themselves: the Man o'War, the Count Fleet, the Tom Fool, the Prioress, the Jim Dandy, the Personal Ensign.

This Sunday the Ladies Handicap will be run for the 137^th, and perhaps last, time. Run first on a wet and muddy day in 1868 at Jerome Park, it boasts an impressive list of distaff winners, many of whom have their own races named for them: Beldame, Top Flight, Vagrancy, Athenia, Flower Bowl, Shuvee.

I'm glad that it's not my job to grade stakes or place them on the calendar; with so many competing interests to serve, it's a thankless task, one bound to irritate more than it pleases. I recognize the difficulties of keeping prominent races that, for one reason or another, have lost their significance in the racing calendar, though the descent of the Ladies Handicap into irrelevance-and perhaps obsolescence--seems like a loss to the racing calendar and to racing history.

For much of the last century and a half, the Ladies Handicap was run in the summer, and until 2005, it was a graded stakes race. Now run in mid-December and ungraded, this celebrated race lives in ignominy, and it seems unlikely that its fortunes will change. A December race on Aqueduct's inner dirt track is unlikely to attract the sort of fillies and mares that would return the race to its former prominence. It wasn't run in 2006, and Dave Grening in the Daily Racing Form quotes P.J. Campo, the racing secretary of the New York Racing Association, as saying that with only ten nominations, the race may not go this Sunday. Next year, there will be no such speculation: the Ladies Handicap has been taken off of the 2009 racing calendar.

Races like the Ladies Handicap are national monuments, no less than Yankee Stadium (soon to go the way of Ebbets Field) and any number of buildings that are registered and recognized as worthy of historic preservation. As part of the most recent franchise deal, all intellectual property-including the races and their names-now belongs to the State of New York, likely not a concept that fills historians with confidence. There's not much we can do about the fact that the Ladies Handicap is run in the winter and that it's ungraded, but its present poor circumstances need not overshadow its celebrated past.

The Ladies Handicap has been run since before Huckleberry Finn was written; since before thirteen of our fifty states joined the union; since before football, hockey, or basketball was formally played in our country. This weekend's renewal likely doesn't include a Shuvee, a Beldame, a Vagrancy, but the fillies and mares who will take to the track are themselves participating in a tradition that's nearly a hundred and fifty years old, and that in itself is worthy of our attention-especially if the Ladies Handicap is about to join other gems of New York history in the history dustbin.

Teresa Genaro writes regularly about (mostly) New York racing and racing history at Brooklyn Backstretch

Giving Racing Thanks

Blood-Horse Staff — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:02:00 GMT

By Teresa Genaro of Brooklyn Backstretch

Race fans are a flagellating group; click on almost any racing website, open almost any trade publication, and you’ll find a host of people dissatisfied with some element of the sport: the betting opportunities; the medication rules; the trends away from the track and to the breeding shed.

But in the spirit of the holiday, I suggest that we suspend our criticism and for a least one day, celebrate what we love about the world of Thoroughbred racing. This particular list trends towards New York, as is appropriate for a Brooklyn-based blogger.

This week, I give racing thanks…

…for the wisdom and stories of Allen Jerkens, and for the generosity with which he shares both.

…for organizations like the Belmont Child Care Association and Backstretch Employees Service Team, for never losing sight of the people who take care of the horse, and for working tirelessly on their behalf.

…for the grits and apples in the track kitchen at Keeneland.

…for Ginger Punch, the Queen of Saratoga; horses are lucky to have one race for the ages at the Spa; this year, she had two: the Go for Wand and the Personal Ensign. She ran like a champ both times, and none of us who saw them will forget them.

…for Saratoga, its charm and its history, and because racing there is like racing nowhere else.

…for Proud Spell and her win in the Alabama, and for what it meant to her trainer and her jockey, after an awful spring.

…for Commentator, who thrilled the crowd in this year’s Whitney.

…for Evening Attire, because he raced until he was ten and went out a winner, earning a berth in the Breeders’ Cup.

…for Richard Migliore’s return to New York after a sojourn in California.

…for Old Friends and its indefatigable leader, Michael Blowen.

…for Big Brown. Love him or hate him, he brought a buzz to racing, and he brought people to the track. I won’t miss those fragile hooves, but I will miss the attention and popularity he brought to the sport.

And you? For what are you giving racing thanks this year?

Teresa Genaro writes about (mostly) New York racing at Brooklyn Backstretch.

The Belmont Child Care Association

cdawahare — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:07:00 GMT

By Teresa Genaro of Brooklyn Backstretch

I'm pretty sure that my local card store has already put out their Christmas cards, and while overall I am about as near to thinking about Christmas as I am to thinking about retirement (and that would be not nearly near enough), a recent e-mail from the Belmont Child Care Association with news about their annual holiday party for the children of the backstretch workers has begun to put me in the Christmas spirit.

Last April, Donna Chenkin, executive director of the Belmont Child Care Association, wrote a piece in The Blood-Horse about the creation of the Belmont Child Care Association and its educational center, Anna House. Since 2003, the teachers and staff at Anna House have cared for and taught the children of the backstretch workers, every single day of the year, beginning at 5 a.m.

One can imagine that finding responsible, reliable child care for the backstretch workers is not easy; few daycare centers and schools are open when they go to work, and the cost of such places is generally prohibitive. Anna House provides a safe, educational environment for very low cost, so that when the backstretch workers go to take care of the horses, they know that their children are well taken care of. In August, Todd and Tracey Pletcher were honored at the BCCA's annual major fundraiser, and in his remarks that night, Pletcher told the story of a man who's worked at the Pletcher barns for eleven years, and whose twin daughters attend Anna House. "Cesar is the backbone of our organization," Pletcher said, noting the relief of the workers who know that their children are looked after. Instead of having their children sleep in the car as they work (not an uncommon occurrence), backstretch workers can, as Pletcher pointed out, do their jobs knowing that their children are in a safe, educational facility, close to where they work.

The BCCA hosts various events throughout the year, some of which are geared towards fund-raising, others of which are simply to serve their clientele. An example of the latter will occur on December 13^th, when the BCCA will host its seventh annual holiday shopping event for the children of Anna House. At this party, the children of Anna House are invited to come and pick out gifts to give to their siblings, parents, and grandparents. When the children arrive at Anna House, they chat with Santa, and then, with a volunteer, they make a shopping list for their family. With list in hand, the children enter the Anna House "mall" and pick out presents for their family. After the presents are selected, they move to Santa's elves, who wrap and tag the gifts. Last year, over three hundred and fifty children left with big smiles and bags full of joy for their families.

I attended this event for the first time a year ago (and wrote about it here); walking with the children among the gifts, seeing them so thoughtfully consider what their parents might like, observing their delight when they found the perfect gift, I saw in action the good work of the BCCA and its donors.

We all know that the sport that we love cannot exist without the backstretch workers, who are all too often forgotten as we discuss championships and marketing and revenue. Their days are long and their pay is low, and racing can't survive without them. The Belmont Child Care Association and its board deserve kudos for their work, which could-and should-serve as a model for similar organizations at racetracks across the country. At Aqueduct on Sunday, the temperature was in the fifty-degree range, and the sunshine felt absolutely balmy; Christmas felt a long way away. But thanks to the planning at the BCCA, the children of Anna House know that Christmas is definitely coming, both for them and for their families.

Teresa Genaro writes about New York Racing at Brooklyn Backstretch.

The Undefeated vs. The Derby Winner

cdawahare — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:11:00 GMT

By Teresa Genaro, Brooklyn Backstretch

What agony to be a fan of the distaff side in November of 1988.

Root for the undefeated Personal Ensign, who had beaten colts in the Whitney two months earlier?

Or root for the Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors?

How to choose?

Each time I watch the race (available here from The Blood-Horse, along with commentary on Personal Ensign’s “perfect trip”), at the start I can’t decide which filly I want to win. It was always Personal Ensign, always that Shug/Phipps tradition…until recently, when, in the wake of Rags to Riches’ magnificent victory in the Belmont, I watched the 1988 Distaff for a first time in a long time…how could I not root for the filly who won a Triple Crown race?

But as they turn into the stretch, as I think, how cool -- is that the Derby winner is lengths in front - she’s going to do it! - my heart tells me who I want to win, because I am asking myself: Where is Personal Ensign?

My brain tells me that the filly winner of the Derby deserves to win this biggest race of the year.

But my heart asks: where is Personal Ensign?

The ending always feels nearly exactly right, nearly too close to call. As superb as Winning Colors was that year, it was Personal Ensign in the running for Horse of the Year, in the running up until the very last race that day, when Alysheba did what he needed to do to garner that honor.

In that Breeders’ Cup Classic, Alysheba battled Seeking the Gold on the track, but in the hearts and minds of American racing fans and turf writers, he was also battling the filly who had won earlier in the day, the filly who, until his nose crossed the wire first, was the pre-eminent race horse in the United States.

It is tempting to make admittedly inexact comparisons to the races being run today and tomorrow: we have an undefeated filly running in Zenyatta, and a presumptive Horse of the Year running in Curlin. Unlike twenty years ago, we seldom speak of these division leaders in the same breath, and this year, twenty-four hours will separate their appearances on the racetrack.

Imagine what it must have been like on that cold, dreary, dark day at Churchill Downs in November of 1988, when race fans gathered, wondering whether they’d see Personal Ensign retire undefeated; whether they’d see the filly Derby winner take the Distaff; whether they’d see a filly or a colt capture Horse of the Year honors.

We could debate endlessly about the best Breeders’ Cup race of all time, but this one tops my list. I never get tired of watching it, never escape my initial ambivalence about the winner, and never cease to exult when Personal Ensign gets there first…though rather wishing that Winning Colors could have won it, too…

Teresa Genaro writes about racing at Brooklyn Backstretch.

In Support of the State-bred

cdawahare — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:22:00 GMT

By Teresa Genaro, Brooklyn Backstretch

This Saturday is New York Showcase Day at Belmont; seven New York-bred stakes races will be run for more than a million dollar in purses, and a variety of family-friendly activities are planned, including hay rides, face painting, and pumpkin carving.

The prevalence of state-bred races on New York race cards is often the object of the derision of bettors, who bemoan their quality and the difficulty in handicapping them. As a fan and a New Yorker, I welcome their presence, looking forward to Showcase Day each fall.

Any registered New York foal with properly filed papers is eligible to run in these races, and they offer a variety of conditions: the Maid of the Mist is for two-year-old fillies; the Mohawk is a mile and an eighth on the turf; the Empire Classic is a mile and an eighth on the dirt. Each of the seven races' names carries with it historical, geographical, or cultural associations.

According to Jeffrey Cannizzo, executive director of New York Thoroughbred Breeders, Showcase Day provides an opportunity to celebrate the New York breeding and racing program, offering some of the most prominent New York-bred races of the year. Just as winners of the Breeders' Cup races often go on to win Eclipse Awards, winners of these races are often featured prominently in the end of year New York State racing awards.

In response to those who decry the quality of New York-bred horses, Cannizzo points to the fact that through September of 2008, 25 New York-breds have won 31 stakes races outside of restricted company at 17 tracks in 10 states, Canada, and England.

One of this year's state-bred stars is Tin Cup Chalice, who raced mostly at Finger Lakes in central New York but who became the first horse to capture the Big Apple Triple--the Mike Lee at Belmont, the New York Derby at Finger Lakes, and the Albany at Saratoga-earning a $250,000 bonus for having done so. He went on to win the Grade II Indiana Derby at Hoosier Park, defeating multiple graded-stakes winner Pyro.

As a New Yorker, I'm proud of the long history of racing in this state, and it makes sense to have races that direct purse money into the breeding program, thereby strengthening it. As a fan, I appreciate the state-bred program because it means that there are horses that I get to watch all year round. As horses bred elsewhere jet around the country to chase purse money, or head south in the winter to enjoy warmer climes, the state-breds I watch at Saratoga in the summer stick around to race at Aqueduct, giving me horses to root for and to head to the track to see through the winter months. They don't generally retire at three, so fans can enjoy them while the higher-profile horses head off to the breeding shed. And of course, the New York State breeding program yielded Funny Cide and Commentator.

It's great to go to the races and watch the stars race in Grade I stakes; as this week has shown, though, those stars are often around only long enough for us to get attached before they're taken off the track. Come out to Belmont on Saturday and pick out a few horses to follow; chances are, they'll be around next year, too.

Teresa Genaro writes about New York racing at Brooklyn Backstretch.

Attracting the Fan

cdawahare — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:34:00 GMT

By Teresa Genaro

Racing faces the daunting task of marketing an identical product to two disparate audiences: the gambler and the fan. Racing can't exist without the former, and it shouldn't exist without the latter.

Figuring out how to get more gambling dollars through the windows (or over the bandwidth) is best left to those who know much more about it than I do; I seldom go the track without betting at all, but as a $2 bettor, I am not particularly well versed in how to extract large sums from heavy hitters.

Aside from the prospect of going home with a little more money than I came with, what attracts me to racing are the stories: of the horses, the trainers, the jockeys, the history. Racing is arguably the oldest sport in this country, and it carries with it a wealth of narratives and legends and tales; even now, most racing telecasts make sure to provide a little back story on the more colorful entrants, in the vein of the old ABC "Up Close and Personal" reports from the Olympics. Smarty Jones had legions of fans not only because he could run fast, but because his owners had a compelling story that was spread all over the television and the newspapers.

While gamblers sustain racing, a track with gamblers only wouldn't be a very fun place to be; Keeneland and Saratoga are popular because they're frequented by fans and small bettors, creating an atmosphere in which people root for their favorites, bet on horses with the same name as their neighbor's dog, and, we can hope, come back again next time with a few friends.

The last few weeks have given us opportunity to reflect on the power of the story in the sport of racing. Curlin wins the Jockey Club Gold Cup for the second year in a row; it wasn't a great betting race, but his record-breaking victory, not the payout, was the story.

And last weekend, seen by far too few people, the well-connected Zarkava, owned by the Aga Khan, took on Europe's best and impossibly beat them; an ocean and a continent away, the humble Pepper's Pride, owned by Joe Allen, set a record of her own by winning her seventeenth consecutive race, an accomplishment that ESPN saw fit to trumpet on a crawl below its Saturday racing telecast.

The stories are out there, at every track and on every backstretch, and they will bring people to the races. As a friend recently wrote to me, "And so horses have made a prince (His Highness Aga Kahn) and a (not quite) pauper (Joe Allen) as happy as they'll ever be. And we get to go along for the ride."

Teresa Genaro writes regularly about racing at Brooklyn Backstretch.

Ladies' Day - Two Sides

cdawahare — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:16:00 GMT

Courtesy of Teresa Genaro

The history of racing in this country reveals a curiously ambivalent attitude towards its female equine athletes. The Old Gray (trotting) Mare may have been racing's first equine star, and from racing's beginnings in this country, colts and fillies regularly raced against each other. Ruthless won the fourth running of the Travers in 1867, while a filly, Sarah B., won the first running of the Champagne.

Of course, the girls have their own races, too, though we sometimes have to wonder at their names: the Matron, oddly named for a race for two-year-olds, and particularly so given that for its first ten years (1892 - 1902), it was open to colts, too. And soon at Keeneland, we'll have the Spinster, a most unfortunate and unattractive name for a race for two-year-olds fillies, one that does not augur well for their future careers as broodmares.

In September of 1914, the two-year-old Comely raced in the Fall Highweight at Belmont; she raced against older horses, she raced against colts, she gave them sixteen pounds...and she won, according to a contemporary account, in a hand ride by a length and a half.

Later in the century, Shuvee dominated her own sex at two and at three; at four, she became the first-and only-mare to win the Jockey Club Gold Cup, and she came back the next year to do it again.

1986 brought us the magnificent Personal Ensign, whose perfect race record is no less impressive than Cigar's win streak, and she, too, took on the boys and won, in the 1988 Whitney.

Intersex racing is a rarity in this country though it thrives overseas, as this weekend's Arc highlights, with the undefeated Zarkava taking on boys and older horses. It's bad enough that the trend in this country keeps females and males from competing in the same race, but in this year's Breeder's Cup, they're not even competing on the same day.

Three weeks from today, I'll be doing pretty much what I'm doing now: working. And while I am, some of this year's most exciting races, with many of this year's most exciting horses, will be taking place. Working at a school does not particularly lend itself to catching a few races streaming live, so like the majority of race fans in this country, I'll miss the Filly and Mare Sprint, the Filly and Mare Turf, and the Filly and Mare Classic (sorry, I just can't bring myself to call it the Ladies' Classic). I'll miss Indian Blessing, Ginger Punch, Hystericalady, Backseat Rhythm, Wait A While.

Over the last century and a half, female horses have established over and over again that they are as exciting and as dominant as the males; they've demonstrated their mettle and their talent. I guess, though, they haven't proved that they're good enough to race on the biggest racing day of the year.

Teresa Genaro writes regularly about racing at Brooklyn Backstretch.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Counter-point courtesy of Patrick Patton

I like Ladies' Day. I've been asking for Ladies' Day for quite some time, and I'm not the only one, but now that it's here seems like many are against it. And, no one is saying they like it anymore. It seems like we've driven off by terms like "sexist" and who can blame us. Well, I'm not going down without a fight.

It's not sexist. This argument is just flat out wrong. When you hear, ‘putting the filly's on Friday and the colts on Saturday is [sexist, demeaning, and/or wrong].' Well that's a false statement. Races restricted to F&M are on Friday, but Saturday's races aren't restricted to the colts. It's open company with some restrictions based on age. The fillies and mares have all the right in the world to run on Saturday if they so wish. And, please Zenyatta, think about it. There are purists out there who see this split around "company" to be very fair. (And, I'm hoping you leave some comments below!)

"The Ladies' Classic". I admit this name could go, and have pointed that out on my blog, but is it really just the name you're mad at? Please don't let that ruin a great day of racing. My guess is they rename it again next year. F&M Classic sounds nicer, and is clearly what people want.

It's not bad business. The BC set out to create 2 days of championship racing, not one kinda-sorta-like a championship day and one "real" one. They fix this by doing what every other track does in the nation, building to a main event. All the tracks I've been to, when I'm lucky enough to be there on a Gr I or Gr II, has other graded stakes or stakes races supporting that finale. Those under-card races generate more handle paired up with the big one than if they stood alone.

How well would a Juv Turf, F Juv Turf, Turf Sprint, Marathon, Mile card do? Pretty poorly! We can debate whether or not the BC watered things down too much later, but for now it is what it is. What the Breeders'Cup is saying is that the F&M Classic is strong enough to carry a card. They didn't think any other race could do it. That's respect.

Friday!!! They can't race on Sunday. While Friday isn't as good as Saturday, it isn't as bad as you might think. In my office we watch TV, usually CNBC, but on special occasions we have watched a Yankees & Mets day game, the Masters, the US Open (golf & tennis), and we'll watch the Breeders' Cup. You'll say, well those people watching in an office won't bet. And, you're right, but those people also might get excited enough to bet on Saturday who weren't thinking about it. Using a whole day to drum business up for Saturday seems like a great idea. We'll see how it goes.

Give it a shot. I don't know what is going to happen on Friday. I'm not exactly sure what Ladies' Day means outside what I've heard about Ascot. The bar is set very low for expectations on this one, so lets hope the BC doesn't just barely clear it, but goes all out to shine a light on the women of this sport. If they don't do that, then I'll be in the "don't like it" camp, but I'm willing to give it a shot.