Notes from the road: Suffolk to Spa

A very brief blog post in the wee hours of a Tuesday morning, mostly just to check in from the road.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be making my inaugural visit to Suffolk Downs on Tuesday afternoon, with my son in tow -- the first-ever family member to join me at a racetrack. Yeah, it's kind of sad that's true.

On Saturday, I have tickets to the Travers, and I'm already antsy to be there.

So, if you're going to be at Suffolk on Tuesday or the Spa on Saturday, keep an eye out for the big, odd-looking fellow who bears a strange resemblance to me. Because it will be.

When the dream is worth more than the dollars

Within the hour, a filly with an emotional back-story will be front and center at Saratoga, in the toughest test of her young racing life.

Few horses who've stacked up a three-race win-streak at Finger Lakes to start their careers would get so much attention. But few horses have a story like Lisa's Booby Trap, not to mention an owner/trainer in Tim Snyder whose handling of the horse has spurred debate, at least in the Twitterverse.

Snyder's been a race-tracker since his birth in the first aid room at Scarborough Downs, where his mother went into labor after his jockey dad won a race. He met the love of his life -- late wife Lisa -- on the back side at Finger Lakes in 1993, after a runaway horse Snyder was riding ran her over. Snyder got the horse under control, then hurried back to see if the girl was OK.

Lisa died of cancer on Christmas Eve a few years ago, and a devastated Snyder took three years away from racing, the only world he's ever known. Snyder finally went back to work for a longtime friend, trainer John Tebbutt. The barn was wintering in Florida when a guy who owed Snyder a favor offered him a horse for $4,500 -- $2,000 down and the rest "on the cuff."

Snyder named his new charge in honor of his late wife, who'd "sworn up and down" she would someday come back as a horse.

But the filly hardly appeared to be a bargain. She's blind in her left eye. She has a flat right front foot and and a left front that's a bit of a "club." And she initially refused to change leads at a gallop.

"I had my doubts," Snyder admitted. "I thought I got took."

"She was a bit gawky, but a good-looking filly," Tebbutt said. "But when we took her to the training track, it wasn't encouraging. She couldn't outrun a fat man ..."

Snyder decided the filly wasn't changing leads because she'd hit her own ankle when she tried. He "made some adjustments," including switching a back shoe to the front, and the difference in her action and attitude were astounding.

Tebbutt said that in her first timed work after the changes, "she was a different horse."

"When I saw my stopwatch," he recalled, "I thought she missed a pole. ... And she did it so effortlessly."

The first three races for Lisa's Booby Trap were much the same -- virtually effortless victories among clearly overmatched company. She didn't just win by daylight, with a 17 3/4-length maiden score, it was like she finished by lunchtime, while the also-rans were straggling home in time for supper.

Offers of up to $500,000 rolled in for the fleet filly. But Snyder wasn't selling. After all, it's only money.

"Whaddya gonna do?" he asks on camera, to nobody and to everybody. "I love the business. I love the horse."

So Snyder decided to step her up in class -- way up, with an entry in the recent Coaching Club American Oaks-G1 at Saratoga -- and that's where the Twitter debate began. While I'd keep the horse, just has Snyder has, pals of mine online were flabbergasted that he wouldn't take the money and run.

"It's like winning the lottery and not cashing the ticket," said one.

Or like getting the first three questions right on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and believing you can go all the way and cash the million, I replied.

I was surprised at the ... well, I can't call it "hostility," but ardent opinion ... that Tim Snyder was out of his mind not to accept a six-figure offer for a horse who (as this game sometimes goes) might never win again, nor even race another step. And they thought he was a fool for throwing her to the Grade 1 wolves, like Devil May Care.

But I shouldn't be shocked. That's the nature of this game.

Horse racing attracts equal parts dreamers and cynics, sometimes in the same person. And probably nobody on the outside understands us at all.

The gambler inside us is always looking for ways to beat the favorite, even sentimental ones. And I get that it's hard to understand how a guy who has been living in the dorms at the track would refuse a half-million bucks for a $4,500 horse.

But many of us have walked into the grandstand on a race-day thinking, "If I can just hit this trifecta in Race 1, I'll be able to fund that Pick-6 ticket the way I really wanna play it, not on the cheap."

If you hit that early "tri," the smartest play might be to shove the payout in your wallet and leave the track before Race 2. But who does that?

You let it ride.

Tim Snyder decided to let it ride. With over $33,000 banked already, the filly named for his beloved, late wife has more than paid him back. In his heart and mind, she owes him nothing. And if he can keep her running like she has been, she might earn him more than $500,000 anyway. Hey, it could happen.

Snyder ultimately scratched Lisa's Booby Trap from the CCA Oaks, citing track conditions, but I wonder whether he didn't just heed the critics and decide to give her a lesser "next" challenge. She's entered in today's Loudonville Stakes, still a big step up in class -- she's 12/1 on the morning line and by far the longest odds -- but a more reasonable task.

Whether horseman or horseplayer, we're all in this game for the same reason. As Jackson Knowlton said after he and his "little guy" partners in Sackatoga Stables won the Kentucky Derby with Funny Cide, it's all about "a dollar and a dream." None of us would be here -- toiling on the backstretch or gambling on the front side, up on a horse's back, or up in an owner's box -- if we weren't occasionally a dreamer. The risks of horse racing, financially and emotionally, are too great unless you're striving for far greater rewards, however improbable.

For some of us, the dollars are the dream.

But Tim Snyder has his dream horse. And you can keep your money.

(Watch TVG's feature on the pairing.)

Update: Big congrats to Tim Snyder and Lisa's Booby Trap, off-the-pace, six-length winner of the Loudonville in 1:09 3/5, in what was mostly a hand-ride. (Video via Thoroughbred Times.)

A new blog that shouldn't be kept 'Confidential'

There's a great new addition to the turf blogosphere, and just in time for the Spa.

Liz O'Connell, a Hudson Valley farm manager and "foal nanny," has launched "Thoroughbred Confidential," which promptly earns a place among the Railbirds Row in the left column of this page. She scores big not only with today's heartwarming, hope-affirming tale of a tough filly who has already beaten the odds, but with a first-post that could be useful to anyone who is both spending considerable time at Saratoga this season, and is tech-dependent enough to want connectivity wherever they go. Liz lists all the known locations for WiFi service in and around Saratoga.

Liz was published in June in "The Rail" section of the New York Times online -- her story of a thoroughbred's birth and early development, "The Promise of a Foal." And she can be found on Twitter, where she's known as @nythoroughbred.

I'm pleased to be the first official follower of Liz O'Connell's "Thoroughbred Confidential," but I do have one piece of advice.

Dash over to SiteMeter.com and sign up for a free counter on your page, Liz. Once the equine- and turf-addicted readers of the Web world figure out where you are and what great stories you have to tell, you're gonna want to keep track of all that traffic.

History in the making, and the ducking

You win some, you lose some. And apparently when phenomenal filly Rachel Alexandra is declared a probable for a Grade 1 race never before won by a female, you gain one and might lose one among the older male horses that had been pointed toward the race.

Steve Asmussen, trainer of Rachel Alexandra, revealed on Monday that she would bypass the Travers S.-G1 and a third shot at 3-year-old males in favor of facing those boys' elders in the Woodward S.-G1. Both races are at Saratoga. The Woodward has never been won by a filly or mare.

The announcement spurred West Point Thoroughbreds to point its Grade 1-winning 4-year-old colt, Macho Again, toward the Woodward, as well. He had been training at Churchill Downs since a second place finish in the Whitney H.-G1 and initially was to skip the Woodward in favor of a little extra rest before the Oct. 3 Jockey Club Gold Cup-G1 back at Belmont.

That was great news for race fans, some of whom had actually suggested Rachel would be pointed toward a race -- reminder, a race never won by a filly -- as a way of ducking competition. Macho Again would have made the Woodward about as tough a field as Rachel could have been expected to face from this year's handicap division, considering Einstein was already bound for the Pacific Classic at Del Mar to face the best of the West.

But trainer Kiaran McLaughlin might make the opposite choice for his previously Woodward-bound horse.

McLaughlin said he contacted Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa al Maktoum, the owner of his 6-year-old Grade 2 winner, Asiatic Boy, about ducking Rachel and crossing the country to race in the Pacific Classic instead of Saratoga's Woodward, to which the horse had previously been pointed.

"I sent an e-mail overseas to talk to the owner and racing officials," McLaughlin told The Blood-Horse, adding that it isn't definite his horse will dodge a meeting with Rachel. The nomination to the Pacific Classic, which is run a day after the Woodward, merely gives Asiatic Boy another option.

"Nobody really wants to face Rachel Alexandra these days," said McLaughlin, which must come as news to the nobodies at West Point, who decided to alter plans and face Rachel rather than lay out of a race that hadn't been on their horse's schedule.

McLaughlin said giving Rachel an eight-pound break -- which she'll receive in the Woodward for being a 3-year-old and a filly -- might just be too much. Calling Rachel "great," a word he says is used too often but is appropriate in her case, McLaughlin flatly said he wanted no part of her. Wherever her principal owner Jess Jackson might send her. Ever.

"She's beat everybody that's gotten in the gate with her this year. Luckily, I haven't gotten in the gate with her and don't look forward to getting in the gate with her with Asiatic Boy," McLaughlin said. "... (S)he's great for the sport, and it's nice that Mr. Jackson chose some of these spots to show how great she is. He said he's hoping to run her next year as a 4-year-old, and that's nice to hear, but I don't look forward to running against her ever, with anything."

That might make perfect sense from a let's-don't-get-our-horse-beat-ever angle. But for McLaughlin to laud Rachel Alexandra as "great for the sport" and applaud Jackson for spotting her against males to prove her worth -- then tell us not to count on him and his horses to be a part of what's "great for the sport" -- leaves me disappointed in a trainer I normally find easy to root for.

I hope the Sheikh and trainer McLaughlin decide to keep Asiatic Boy in the East and face Rachel. If so, good luck to them.

If not, and if Rachel does happen to lose the Woodward, I hope it's Macho Again who proves to have been the man for the job.

Maybe West Point -- which sells and manages racehorse partnerships -- simply sees a Woodward with Rachel as too big a marketing opportunity to miss, win or lose. But winning would be a just reward for seeing history about to be made and choosing to be a part of it by running in, rather than from, the race.

Bummer, no 'Bird' rematch in Travers

It probably isn't the biggest shock, but I was bummed to learn that Mine That Bird will miss the Grade 1 Travers Stakes at Saratoga this weekend as he recovers from recent epiglottis surgery.

It had been expected that the relatively simple procedure wouldn't make him miss the race, but a complication -- so minor as to perhaps not really be a complication at all -- has prompted the Kentucky Derby winner's connections to take a pass on the race as a measure of absolute caution.

I had been looking forward to the Travers as a race laden with talent in which perhaps both 3-year-old classic-winning sons of Birdstone -- Belmont-winner Summer Bird being the other -- would be coming from well off the pace and collecting the leaders in the stretch to make for the finish of the season.

And it's still got the makings of a great race. Quality Road indeed has something to prove, the talented Charitable Man might have more in the tank at the end of 10 furlongs than he did in the Belmont at 12, and Kensei has been the impressive winner of the Dwyer and Jim Dandy in succession.

Mine That Bird instead will be headed to the Goodwood in October at Santa Anita, which should be a good prep race for the Breeders' Cup Classic, at the same track over which that race will be run.

Bird flies coop, leaving Borel behind

Mark Allen, primary owner of Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird, has told the Daily Racing Form that he and the horse's trainer, Bennie Woolley Jr., have taken the mount away from jockey Calvin Borel.

The Churchill Downs-based rider effectively won the horse and his connections the Derby by conserving the horse's energy and making the jockey's patented move up the inside fence in the late-going, a style of riding that has earned Borel the nickname "Bo-Rail." But after taking off the horse to ride filly Rachel Alexandra in the Preakness -- winning that race, relegating Mine That Bird to second, and ending the Birdstone gelding's Triple Crown hopes -- Borel was back on the horse for the Belmont Stakes, and was criticized by a number of observers, including Woolley, for a ride in which the jockey likely moved the horse too soon.

Mine That Bird was beaten in the Belmont by another Birdstone son, Summer Bird.

Allen told DRF that he and Woolley were not yet ready to name a new rider, but Borel wouldn't be the person aboard Mine That Bird when the gelding makes his expected return to the races in the Aug. 1, $750,000 West Virginia Derby-G2 at Mountaineer Park.

To a degree, I suppose, a little turnabout is fair play. Borel had to make a choice between MTB and the filly for the Preakness, and beyond a doubt made the right one at the time. He's paid for it since by regaining -- and now losing -- Mine That Bird, and by learning that Rachel's ownership group, primarily Jess Jackson of Stonestreet Stable, claim they will not run her on racing's biggest weekend, the Breeders' Cup this fall at Santa Anita. Jackson does not want the filly running on a synthetic track, even though she's won a race over such a surface as a 2-year-old.

Now, Allen says, Borel was hedging on whether he would ride Mine That Bird in West Virginia, or take the mount on Warrior's Reward in the Jim Dandy S.-G2 at Saratoga. If Borel was uncertain which horse to take in that case, it was his mistake. Warrior's Reward might be a very good colt, but as of now he's a Grade 3-placed runner with five lifetime starts who is pointed toward a $500,000 race.

While Borel is tabbed to ride Warrior's Reward (who beat Barbaro's brother Nicanor in a maiden race) in the Dwyer Stakes on the Fourth of July, I find it hard to believe Borel would consider keeping that mount over a Derby winner who placed in all three Triple Crown races and is pointed toward a $750,000 race, from which the jockey's winnings would be 50 percent more than if his horse won the Jim Dandy.

"I'm not going to bad-mouth Calvin or Jerry (Hissam, Borel's agent) because they've done me a lot of good. Heck, they won the Derby for me," said Allen. "But I'm not going to let them hang us out the way they did before the Preakness, waiting until the last minute to tell us we needed another rider."

Speaking in terms with which Allen is certainly familiar, I have to call bullshit on his claims of Borel "hanging them out ... until the last minute" with his choice of Rachel Alexandra for the Preakness. Once Jess Jackson owned her and pointed her toward that race, Borel made his definitive choice almost immediately. I blogged that he'd made the right choice on June 8, and that's a week and a day before the big race at Pimlico; hardly short notice.

But, Allen and Woolley have the right to put any jock they want on their horse, and unless the West Virginia Derby draws up way tougher than I'm expecting, Mine That Bird will be the heavy -- if not short-priced -- favorite to win.

So whoever that guy (or gal) to get the mount happens to be, should count himself lucky.

What did Monday's Jerry do with Saturday's Jerry?

Will the real Jerry Moss please stand up? Or at least stop singing different tunes?

Moss, founder of A&M Records and owner of the most-accomplished older mare in America, Zenyatta, on Saturday morning appeared on a satellite radio racing program, "Down The Stretch." During an interview, Moss said that since it appears stellar 3-year-old filly Rachel Alexandra won't be coming to the Breeders' Cup to face his mare, then his mare would just go on the road to find that filly.

"There's a good chance," Moss said Saturday, that Zenyatta would seek out Rachel, most likely at an eastern racetrack on a conventional dirt surface.

By Monday, Moss was backpedaling so quickly that the only way to make out his original statement now might be to run the tape in reverse and listen for it between the repeated phrases of "turn me on, dead man ..."

"We'd love to meet Rachel Alexandra, and I'm sorry she apparently isn't coming to the Breeders' Cup," Moss said in an interview with The Blood-Horse. "... As owners, we plan for the Breeders' Cup. That is where championships are supposed to be resolved. My brain is fighting my heart on this, because I'd like to give Zenyatta every chance to remove any doubts about her place in history, and Rachel Alexandra would be a challenge. ... We'd like to meet her, but we don't want to swerve out of our program, because we still have the Breeders' Cup foremost in our sights."

Sounds like somebody got a lecture from his trainer, John Shirreffs, after Saturday's satellite radio interview.

Shirreffs had said weeks ago that Zenyatta was going nowhere this summer, not in the sense that she wouldn't be running and winning races, only that she'd be running and winning them all on synthetic surfaces in Southern California.

Since Rachel's principal owner, Jess Jackson, has said he doesn't want his filly running "on plastic" (even though she has a synthetic surface victory to her credit), it appears the leading 3-year-old filly in the country will not be Breeders' Cup-bound. For the second straight year, the Cup will be run at Santa Anita, which has a Pro-Ride synthetic surface. Jackson, whose superstar and champion Curlin flopped in the Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita last year, says he isn't going back.

Moss on Monday appeared to end any notion that Zenyatta might face Rachel at Saratoga in the Go For Wand on Aug. 2, the Personal Ensign on Aug. 30 or at Belmont in the Oct. 3 Beldame. No mention was made at The Blood-Horse of the $1 million, Grade 2 Delaware Handicap coming up July 19, but since that race would be a deviation from Shirreffs' ultra-conservative plan, one has to figure it's out, too.

Moss suggested that perhaps his unbeaten mare -- who won her 11th in as many tries by taking the Vanity Handicap Saturday -- and the outstanding Rachel Alexandra might be able to meet post-Breeders' Cup. But he bellyached about the detention barn at Belmont ("We had a very bad experience with Giacomo going to the dention barn at Belmont ... he went nuts.") and talked like he was scared of running Zenyatta at Saratoga because the "tight turns would compromise Zenyatta given her running style of coming wide from behind."

"Every venue has its idiosyncracies that are risky," Moss said.

So there it is. What looked like a possibility Saturday -- that Moss would be sporting enough to send Zenyatta out to meet Rachel even if Jackson isn't sporting enough to have Rachel attend the Breeders' Cup -- seems an impossibility today. Unless the two meet somewhere after the Breeders' Cup, in the six or weeks or so remaining before Zenyatta is almost certain to be retired to the breeding shed. And, pardon my asking, but exactly what suitable race remains on the calendar after racing's festival of festivals, the Breeders' Cup, which is intended to all but close out the season.

Sadly, much of Moss' reversal appears to hinge on the notion that putting Zenyatta in any position other than a race hand-picked to play to her every strength is "risky" -- not to the mare's health, mind you, but simply to her chances of staying unbeaten.

Moss and Jackson have invested so much in this sport, where risk is inherent with every powerful stride. It's disappointing to see them both become so protectionist now regarding their greatest investments, Zenyatta and Rachel, both of whom were conceived, foaled and nurtured to race.

Just apparently not to race against each other.