Considering January is meant to be a quiet period for horse racing, there sure is a lot happening.
Woodbine jockey Patrick Husbands popped up in my Google News alerts twice recently. The first instance was a positive story listing the inaugural Horse Racing Ambassadors of Barbados Awards.
"During the event, jockeys, trainers and horse owners were rewarded for their outstanding achievement at race tracks in Canada, the United Kingdom and Trinidad and Tobago.
Those jockeys who received the Ambassador of Horse Racing Award include Patrick Husbands and Jonathan "Jono" Jones for their outstanding contribution at the Woodbine Race Track in Canada.
Race horse owners Eugene Melnyk and Lord Michael Taylor respectively, also copped Ambassador of Horse Racing Awards for their outstanding achievement at the Canadian Circuit."
However, another less-favourable story announced that
Husbands was blamed for Blackstone Street's flop in the 16th running of the First Citizens Gold Cup at Santa Rosa Park.
"During an inquiry by the Trinidad and Tobago Racing Authority into the running of the son of Victory Gallop/Skipping Lass, champion trainer Glenn Mendez said that in his opinion the horse was “fit and sound as at any stage of his career.”
And he also produced a veterinarian certificate from Dr Roger d’Abadie to back up his claim.
Mendez offered that the rider (Husbands) who was flown in especially for the mount to challenge Bruceontheloose, “may have attempted unorthodox tactics which worked against the horses’ natural running style.” "
Try as I might, I could not find video of the race. Husbands won 188 races from 972 starts in 2009 as the leading rider at Woodbine.
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Video is causing quite the stir in the racing world at the moment as the popular Youtube Channel Partymanners which featured some 1500 race videos from the past 30 years had its account suspended. The topic has been touched on by Equispace, Big Event Blog and most recently by the R2 Collective.
The Partymanners channel provided video content for hundreds of blogs and was an important resource for fans and handicappers alike. To lose access to these videos is a huge loss to racing.
Recently, Woodbine Entertainment Group launched their own WEG Replay Channel on Youtube which features video of both harness and thorougbred races from WEG tracks.
As well, Youtube channels run by Churchill Downs Incorporated and TVG offer a great deal of recent racing video.
However, these channels currently lack the historical footage that was made available by Partymanners. One can only hope that the Partymanners account will be re-opened as the valuable footage is of huge marketing importance to a racing industry struggling to find new fans.
As an aside, I find it very frustrating as a racing fan/writer/blogger to dig so hard to find both video and statistics that are so readily available to the public in other sports. For the most part, racing statistics are only available as a paid service. Whereas, baseball fans can access sites such as Baseball-Reference.Com and browse to a multitude of FREE historical baseball statistics. If a reader can point to a similar racing site, I'd be most grateful.
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I'm almost afraid to mention the following link considering the issues above, but recently Equidaily reported on an article in the Village Daily Sun regarding a horse racing video archive site.
Said site, Chef-De-Race features an incredible archive of race videos spanning from 1932 (Phar Lap!) to present day. According to Chef-De-Race, "The media player below provides access to streaming videos of famous races. At present the list includes every Kentucky Derby since 1969 plus other personal favorites."
To view the media player, click on this link.
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A recent in-race fight between jockeys at Philadelphia Park went viral on the web and was featured on ESPN.
I went to the track and a hockey game broke out...
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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