Derby List Last 200 Messages

[Mark Peel via Derby]

 Like Chuck, I've watched almost every minute of racing at Saratoga this summer--NYRA makes Equibase PPs for each day's races available at https://www.equibase.com/content/CustomPPs/NYRABroadcast.html and I download them to my iPad and settle in for an afternoon of handicapping.  I don't use any of the ADW platforms--just sit on the couch and make imaginary bets, losing my imaginary shirt.

Tom Amoss is one of the most interesting commentators on the NYRA broadcasts (he's finished his broadcasting duties for the season, though--has to follow his string to Kentucky).  I didn't hear him expostulate on Lasix, but his attitude is typical of trainers.  None of them believe that Lasix is a "performance enhancing" drug.  Trainers view Lasix as if it were no different from your morning cup of coffee (and it does, indeed, function in a somewhat similar way--its diuretic effects induce a rapid water-weight loss that surely does give horses a temporary jolt).   Trainers, in fact, are surely the largest single group in racing aligned against a ban on race-day medications.  Owners, as a group, can't be counted on to support drug reform--some do, some don't.  Breeders are the strongest constituency for limiting drugs--they feel that drugs mask defects in the breed, and their widespread use has led to too many inferior horses having reasonably successful racing careers and moving into the breeding shed, where they pass on their unsound genes.  Jockeys probably favor limits on medication because they want sound animals under them--understandably, they don't want to get killed; but jockeys also depend on trainers for mounts, and so they say very little for public attribution on the subject of drugs in racing.  But of all the vested interests in the sport, trainers are by far the least sentimental about the horse, and most threatened by the prospect of reforms that would protect the equine athletes they profess to love.  I think you have to take what Amoss says as a predictable point of view, not gospel truth.
Speaking of the Fox broadcast team, since I've spent so much time with them, I have formed some very strong opinions about them.  The two paddock blondes, Maggie Wolfendale and Acacia Courtney, are both very good at judging a horse's conformation, behavior, and fitness, things that few handicappers know much about.  That's one reason why the two are so universally popular, and I love them both--with a slight edge to Maggie, who, after going over the contenders in the paddock, often gets up on a horse and rides out to watch their warm ups.  She's definitely the hardest worker in the bunch. 

Now much of what you get from Maggie and Acacia ("he's built down hill like a sprinter,"  "she's put on weight since the last time I saw her," "he's very professional today, not like his last race a Aqueduct") isn't really useful to bettors, but more than any other aspect of the program, they give you a feel for what it might be like to be there, racing form in hand, sizing up the entries as they parade onto the track.  They're both really great.

At the other end of the spectrum, the two track handicappers, Jonathen Kinchen and Andy Serling, are unbearable.  Kinchen won a national handicapping contest in 2015, which is apparently what qualifies him to be an on-air personality.  For someone who is supposed to be finding interesting angles, though he lands on the favorite an awful lot.  Worse, he's wrong a lot.   Four weeks into the meeting, and Kinchen has exhausted all of the expressions he has at his command for describing a horse's performance, and as it's a very limited vocabulary, he's grown wearisome.  The Hawaiian shirts can't compensate for his colorlessness as an analyst.  

Even worse is the unnecessarily obnoxious Andy Serling.  Serling is one of those people who thinks he's much wittier than he really is.  He doesn't seem to have matured beyond high school--the needless and awkward "ribbings" he gives his colleagues are gratuitous and just not funny.  They all seem to tolerate him on camera, but I suspect they dislike him intensely off camera; and as he's also not good at picking winners, they probably don't respect him much, either.  

The hosts, Laffit Pincay and Greg Wolfe, are professional, well prepared, and easy to listen to.  Wolfe  especially seems to do his homework--it's clear he's not only dug into the past performances for the day's entries, he knows a lot about the foes they've faced in the races they're coming out of, too.
Two former jockeys, Richard Migliore and Gary Stevens, are also make regular appearances on the set. Gary Stevens isn't really comfortable on camera; he stutters and mispeaks a good deal; but he really knows how to watch a race, and always has something interesting to add about the trip a horse has had or how the jockey chose to ride the race.  Migliore is much better on camera than Stevens, and adds a lot to the broadcast.
Didn't mean to go on like this, but you can probably tell I'm watching way too much racing on television, and needed to get this off my chest.
Civres
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