HIGH AND MIGHTY

This post is dedicated to MIGHTY BEAU, died at Penn National 11 days ago
(see below)



HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL RACES ON SUNDAY!
Tons of stars in action, check
local listings for watching/wagering

(photo at right..APACHE CAT, the favourite for the SPRINT is a beauty by LION CAVERN)

Notes from Hong Kong Jockey Club website:

Apache Cat zipped home his last 400m in 22.0 sec despite appearing to be unextended. Ellett has ridden the horse throughout his career and was enthusiastic about how well he's done in Hong Kong.

"He really does feel great. He's very laid-back, very relaxed and takes everything in his stride. It doesn't matter to him whether he's going left handed or right handed and the change of environment hasn't bothered him," she said.

Apache Cat's trainer Greg Eurell was also satisfied with what he saw this morning.

"I'm very pleased with him. He's a horse who enjoys his work, did it pretty comfortably this morning and everything has gone as well as we could hope for," he said.

(at right, ARTISTE ROYALE, a 7y0 from Neil Drysdale's vbarn is a contender for the big race, the Cup)



HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? - MIGHTY BEAU DIES IN $4k CLAIMER

And not one publication reported on it?


MIGHTY BEAU, multiple CHURCHILL DOWNS stakes winning sprinter, once so good he went to ROYAL ASCOT FOR TWO RACES (4 days apart) for trainer JEFF MULLINS and owners MIKE CLOONAN AND ANTHONY CAROLAN, suddenly went from $25K claiming this spring to just $4,000 claiming at PENN NATIONAL on Nov. 29.
His current owner was MICHAEL GILL and the trainer was JAMES TAGLIANETTI.

He died in that race.

This is an incredible story that was NOT REPORTED ANYWHERE except on racing forums around the world - Del Mar Racing Forum, The Chronicle of the Horse, etc.

MIGHTY BEAU was well travelled and a super turf sprinter, racing well against the likes of Canadian Horse of the Year SOARING FREE.

He was claimed from CLOONAN AND CAROLAN for $25,000 in 2007 by GUMPSTER STABLE and trainer SCOTT LAKE and then taken by MICHAEL GILL for $25,000 earlier this year.

MOST RECENT STATS (from Pedigree Query)

Owner: Michael Gill
Breeder: Mighty Acres
State Bred: OK
Winnings: 75 Starts: 12 - 19 - 10, $645,996

At 2: 2nd Juvenile S.; 3rd Oklahoma Classics Juvenile S.
At 3: 2nd Smile H., Shakertown S., Nureyev S.; 3rd Kentucky Cup Turf Dash S
At 5: Won Beck Auto Turf Sprint; 2nd Aegon Turf Sprint S G3,5FT); 3rd Hol.Turf Express H. (G3,5.5FT)
At 6: Won Aegon Turf Sprint S. (G3,5FT); 2nd Shakertown S. (G3,5.5FT), Taylor's Special H. (FG,5.5FT)
At 7: 3rd Texas Glitter H. (G3,5FT)

Foaled February 21, 1999.
Euthanized November 29, 2008 after breaking down in the third race at Penn National.



BETTER NEWS...

FRAZEE'S FOLLY , 11 , wins FINAL START!

The classy grey gelding FRAZEE'S FOLLY, owned by Ruberto Racing Stable (regular contributors to the www.alexbrownracing.com website) won his final career start last night at Mountaineer Park by a nose.
The $5,000 claiming race was run at 6 furlongs in the mud.
Frazee's Folly, a son of Canadian bred BEAU GENIUS, was winning for the 19th time in his 90th race and he has earned $537,602. He has been stakes placed 5 times.


OLD FRIEND - JUST LE FACTS, RACING AGAIN...

9-year-old JUST LE FACTS, written about ont his site many times, was 7th at Penn National last night in a $4,000 claimer. He won the Red Bank handicap years ago and has earned over $259,000 from 48 races.
He is a horse that has been pulled up in races and has been written about in many major publications including the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS (JERRY BOSSERT) this past FEBRUARY:

TRIPPED UP: The quality of racing at Aqueduct during the winter isn't the best but it may have hit a new low today. Entered in the fifth is Just Le Facts, a 9-year-old gelding who "broke down" at Philadelphia Park in his last start according to the comment issued in the Daily Racing Form on Jan. 19. In his previous start, Just Le Facts was eased at Aqueduct on Dec. 27. Since breaking down, the gelding allegedly worked twice, including a bullet workout on Feb.16 over the Belmont training track. We'll be sure to keep an eye on him.

**Hopefully somebody is keeping an eye on him..


SITES YOU SHOULD KNOW

Any time of year is good for giving - but this time of year, when racehorses are resting, retired or looking for homes, is the best for giving back to our friends.

DONATE to LONGRUN THOROUGHBRED RETIREMENT FOUNDATION today - ask about their 2009 CALENDARS.

Here are some sites you may want to jot down:


HORSE MEMORIAL SITE
http://scrollsequus.blogspot.com/2008/12/mighty-beau-usa.html

BLOGGER NOTES ALL HORSES WITH CHART COMMENTS IN DISTRESS:
http://forinesperado.blogspot.com/


ONTARIO RACING COMMISSION VET LIST
http://www.ontarioracingcommission.com/PDF_reports/Commission_Veterinarians_List.pdf




ARIZONA RACING SYMPOSIUM UNDERWAY


In a year when bettors and fans had many gut-checks, breakdowns, drug issues and numerous other instances where the integrity and perception of the racing game was placed in question...one big-time study presented yesterday put it out there in black and white:

excerpt from DAILY RACING FORM

Biggest fans lost confidence, marketer says
By Matt Hegarty

TUCSON, Ariz. - Support for horse racing among its most ardent fans suffered a "massive" drop in confidence this year under concerns about the integrity of the sport's participants and the safety of its horses, according to a professional marketer who has conducted 10,000 interviews with racing fans over the past five years.

Jonathan Chavez, the co-founder of a marketing company that has been paid by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association to survey horse racing fans over the past five years, said that numbers measuring the confidence of hard-core racing fans dropped 12 to 13 points in the last year, according to his surveys. Chavez said the drop was the most dramatic he had seen in his years conducting the surveys.

"[Racing] may have reached a tipping point," Chavez said.

As an analogy to horse racing's problems this year, Chavez cited the widespread loss of confidence in the sport of boxing over the past 20 years because of concerns about integrity.

According to the surveys, racing fans said they were most concerned about the "overmedication" of horses and the perception that the bet-processing system was being manipulated. Chavez also cited high-profile ontrack breakdowns that have marred the Triple Crown and Breeders' Cup over the past few years, as well Big Brown's last-place finish in the Belmont Stakes after being hyped as a kind of superhorse going into the third leg of the Triple Crown.

http://www.drf.com/news/article/100458.html



EXCERPT:from THOROUGHBRED DAILY NEWS THIS MORNING

The Power of Blogs by Matt Carter

This year's Mark Kaufman workshop, titled The Power of Blogs, dealt with the social media and how the racing industry can use it to their advantage.
The workshop is named after the former Turf Publicists of America President, who passed away in 1995. The panelists included:
Jennie Rees, Louisville Courier-Journal; Jonathan Chavez, co-founder and director of analytics for SocialSphere Strategies; Patrick Patten, writer of the Thoroughbred racing blog Handride; and Bill Knauf, assistant general manger and assistant vice president of
marketing operations for Monmouth Park.

The panel session was moderated by Eric Wing, President of the Turf Publicists of America. While the focus was blogging, the definition of blog was expanded to include social media sites such as Facebook. As Bill Knauf put it, Hi, my name is Bill Knauf and I'm addicted to Facebook. Prior to the panel session, during the TPA Big Sport of Turfdom Award, Larry Jones, the trainer of back-to-back Kentucky Derby runners-up, said blogs "[help people] form an opinion on something they've never heard before." The panel session touched on the importance of the bloggers' experience.
"People want [to read] personal, honest experiences,"Mr. Patten said.