2022 is gone…remembrances of the recent past

Real Writing on Racing 💯

It’s a new year and we are back! For racing enthusiasts it’s already getting deep into the winter racing season with the traditional Santa Anita, Gulfstream Park championship and Aqueduct ‘formerly known as the inner track’ meets in action. Oaklawn and Fair Grounds start early these days but the serious horses have yet to be unleashed, there is even hope that more non-Bourbon Street grass might be found in New Orleans soon. Tampa’s turf maidens and three year old stakes schedule which increase in importance every year (regardless of the weak decision by the graded stakes committee to downgrade the Tampa Bay Derby) are rolling and even Turfway looks relatively playable. Laurel is also open but honestly…nobody outside of crab country (and Frank Vespe) pays much attention to non-Preakness Maryland racing and the Pennsylvania tracks look gloomy year-round so business as usual.

We don’t want to ring in the new year with any heavy issues so today we will just jot down some of our lasting 2022 memories. Feel free to leave your memories in the comments section on the bottom of this page or on any of our social media accounts! One of the positive side effects of writing this blog and doing our podcast is hearing from the readers and listeners, enjoying their racing stories and experiences.

What will we remember about 2022?

🕯 Flightline’s greatness was like a candle in the wind. His 2022 itinerary: three races, three tracks, three distances, three destructions of all of the best of our top horses. He wasn’t here long, he wasn’t durable, he wasn’t Secretariat. Yet like fleeting athletic greatness that preceded him (Bo Jackson anyone?), when you think of 2022, his embarrassing the Pacific Classic field or crushing an ultra-talented Life is Good in the Breeders Cup Classic will be lasting memories. Many groaned about his retirement but popular decisions are often mistakes. Flightline mopping up the also-rans a few times in glorified exhibitions at 1-9 would have been beneath him honestly. He wasn’t your traditional great horse, he wouldn’t have won the Triple Crown, he never carried weight, his campaigns were brief. Yet history shows no other horse that ran a peak race in every start, at different tracks and different distances. His career isn’t a template for others though, Flightline was a glitch in the matrix but for sure we will remember him.

💣 Rich Strike’s Derby. It took luck or fate or some combination of the two, to even allow him to get into the starting gate, let alone win the thing at 80-1. It’s so unlikely that no one would believe the story if it didn’t actually happen. Claimed by a journeyman trainer for a rookie owner, ridden by a small track rider of little note, he hadn’t won a single race outside of that maiden 30000 race the previous September. His speed figures were pokey, his dirt form mostly poor. It took Wayne Lukas to scratch his Derby entrant, perhaps as unlikely of all the dominos to fall as Lukas has rarely (never?) willingly scratched out of a Classic race over his long and storied career. A supersonic speed duel between the UAE Derby qualifiers was the next ‘hard to believe’ occurrence. Sonny Leon guided Rich Strike over the Churchill Downs course like Lewis and Clark navigated the Northwest, making every right move before finding his own Pacific Ocean, hitting the wire less than a length ahead of race favorite Epicenter. It wasn’t long before his trainer Eric Reed shockingly skipped the Preakness to point for the Belmont, a move which didn’t work, as he was well beaten when 6th in the final leg of the Triple Crown. Rich Strike raced okay the rest of the season, showing that he wasn’t as ordinary as his pre-Derby form had shown but nowhere near as good as his ardent and unusually aggressive supporters believed he was. His year ended with a whimper as he was terrible in the Clark, and the early 2023 plans of his connections seem to continue to misidentify Rich Strike as something other than a horse that enters his 4 year old season with two lifetime wins, albeit one very big one.

🆘 Joel Rosario’s ride on War Like Goddess. Rosario is heading to the hall of fame once his 20 years riding requirement is fulfilled but everyone has a bad day once in awhile. On September 3rd his incredibly poor ride on the mare in the Flower Bowl (Gr II) not only cost WLG her second trophy in that race but might have cost her the eclipse award as champion older turf mare. We all have our own opinions of what a bad ride is. Twitter denizens whine about bad rides daily because the horse they bet on lost, not because the jockey rode poorly or did anything wrong. War Like Goddess trip however, was a mess from the start and considering she was significantly better than the field, her only vulnerability was if Rosario got her bogged down inside behind a slow pace leaving her with an impossible task. Well that’s exactly what happened as the classy Virginia Joy (GB) was allowed to have a loose lead in glacial fractions of 53.1 -1:19.3 while War Like Goddess was hopelessly trapped on the inside at the back of the pack. When the field turned for home, Virginia Joy (GB), taking full advantage of the pokey pace, sprinted away from the group while Rosario was still trying to thread the needle, searching for a seam to run through. He finally got a clear path in the stretch and War Like Goddess put in an incredible effort, getting her last 1/8 in an amazing 10 seconds or so. That still wasn’t enough however to reel in Virginia’s Joy (GB) who quite literally got a head start. A fourth graded stakes win (the Flower Bowl was unjustly downgraded to a grade II for the 2022 season btw) would probably have wrapped up an Eclipse for War Like Goddess considering one win was a grade I against males and she was a sharp third against the boys again in the BC Turf, the best turf race run in America this year. Instead I see a lot of votes for fillies and mares other than her and with the questionable way many voters use year end award logic these days (a lot of counting and reliance in a outdated graded system) it’s not a reach to say this hatchet job cost her the title.

🛁 One of the harebrained quotes that I used quite often this year was about a “hot tub time machine”, when referring to the resurgent Wayne Lukas at age 87. His win in the Kentucky Oaks with Secret Oath was one of it’s more memorable runnings in recent years and his success at the biggest US meet of them all, Saratoga, was quite a surprise. He won a graded two year old filly stakes at Saratoga (his old wheelhouse), the Adirondack, for a record 7th time. Most of his horses seemed to tail off toward the end of the year and this hot run was probably short lived but for a few brief moments newer racing fans and participants got a glimpse of what the 80’s to early 90’s was like when Wayne was the king, the very first nationwide supertrainer.

🎤 The Battle of the Big Mouths & the final ending for Pompano Park. Click here to read about the final days of the venerable old south Florida track and the whirlwind and wildly successful promotion put on back in April, by two of the best people in the game, Gabe Prewitt and Pete Aiello. Still hard to believe that it’s gone.

⚖️ The saga of Bob Baffert. We came into 2022 not knowing exactly what was going to happen to Mr Baffert or his Kentucky Derby hopefuls. Racing was floating into uncharted territory with the sports biggest name and leading Kentucky Derby trainer ever, being summarily suspended by CDI from participating in the continents most important race. I dare say that for at least the first 5 months of the year, THIS was the overwhelming topic in American racing. The wild part was the twists and turns that kept arising, seemingly on a weekly basis. On the Big Monday show I distinctly remember several times apologizing to listeners for the never ending discussion of this topic but also understood that the fact was that Baffert and his controversy was what people wanted to hear and talk about. It ended with more of a whimper than a bang though we still have another round of Kentucky Derby preps, in which Mr Baffert’s participation will disqualify his steeds ability to earn valuable eligibility points, to look forward to this spring. So buckle up for another odd triple crown year and potentially the first ever “Previously trained by…” Derby winner heading towards Baltimore and the Preakness.

Quick thoughts 👎🏼 Or 👍🏼

👎🏼 Jackie’s Warrior could have been a Hall of Famer if he had gotten the job done in the BC sprint. Don’t see it happening now

👎🏼 Speakers Corner looked like a major contender until two thrashings at the hands of Flightline and Life is Good rendered him an empty shell of himself

👍🏼 Cody’s Wish improved all year, culminating with a BC Mile win around two turns after a massive closing effort when running down Jackie’s Warrior in the Forego. His human connection with his namesake is an inspiring story but let’s hope he gets to try a different form of inspiration and his connections let him try to win longer races post-Met Mile and really see what he can do. Bill Mott had a quietly great year in 2022.

👍🏼 Game of Silks rollout and partnership with Fox Sports and NYRA. Check it out Silks, Horseracing first Web3 fantasy game using real life horses . Read more about it in layman’s terms here.

👎🏼 Retirements - it seemed like every well-bred and at the very least marginally credentialed intact male was retired to stud after the 2022 season. Of the elite types, only Taiba is definitely racing in 2023 and a lot of otherwise pretenders will be knocking off historically weak older horse races all season. Cyberknife, Mo Donegal, Early Voting, Mandaloun, Jack Christopher, Speakers Corner, Mystic Guide, Aloha West, Epicenter, Jackie’s Warrior, Olympiad, Life is Good, Flightline, Happy Saver, Golden Pal, Sir Winston and even mostly second tier horses like Mind Control, Greatest Honour, Plainsman, Highly Motivated, Warrior’s Charge, Pinehurst, Keepmeinmind, Concert Tour, True Valour, Idol and Drain the Clock and two year old champ but one race 3yo bomb Corniche all headed to stud. Hot Rod Charlie is supposedly still at Gainesway Farm though no plans have been announced as of yet. Yeah sorry that wasn’t quick…

👍🏼 Saratoga is still 👑 of tracks….where else in racing could I write a rambling daily blog and have 800+ people subscribe to read it daily?

🫲🏼 Kentucky Derby point system changes. Liked that they added 4th/5th place and made some early races and the BC Juvy worth more points but more work remains my CDI friends!

👍🏼 Chuck Appleby and Bill Buick running clinics

👎🏼 2022 was the year that American racetracks seemed to forget how to grow grass

👎🏼👎🏼 HISA. Poorly conceived, poorly executed, poorly managed…yet those cheerleaders still drinking the kool-aid see it as some sort of magic wand. A lesson on how to destroy your industry via poor regulation will one day be studied in future classrooms, the marginalization of American horseracing the prime example.

👎🏼👎🏼 HISA (part 2). The empowerment of regulation veterinarians who are clearly drunk with power despite many having potentially suspect qualifications or lacking requisite talent is wearing down many, many frustrated horsemen. You’ll see more and more trainers and owners just walk away from the game as they are poked, prodded, second guessed, harassed, buried in paperwork and red tape or at worst, victim of the egos of the new wardens of the backside prison. It’s another hidden issue that you won’t read about in the establishment racing media who would rather play dumb on the topic.

👍🏼 The Breeders Cup Distaff. Race of the year? Sure was worst beat of the year if you bet Blue Stripe. Still trying to figure out what Irad’s strategy was on Nest?

👎🏼 😔 RIP Kittens Joy, Dave Litfin, Ouija Board, Angel Penna, Jr, TV Smith, Noel Hickey, Sarah Ramsey, Lester Piggott, Callie Witt, Eugene Melnyk, Jim Ryan, Billy Reed, Richard Duchossois, Da Hoss, Evan Jackson, Bert Sonnier, Code of Honor, Howard Zucker, Include, Bob Coglianese, More than Ready, Broken Vow, Rock of Gibraltar, Royal Applause, Swain and I apologize for anyone who I missed.

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