Notes From North and South

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Bernies Blog

(1) Double Diamond Farm's First Dude passed the $18 million mark in career progeny earnings in the past two days.

(2) Journeyman Stud's Khozan, last year's leading Florida freshman sire, is easily the leading second-crop sire this year with progeny earnings of $2,330,047. He's going after First Dude's record of the last six years - $3,249,001.

(3)) Just before the seventh race last night at Mountaineer Resort, Race Track and Casino in West Virginia, the cameras fixed on a wonderful sight. Three young deer bounded across the turf course, then the main track, and disappeared under the grandstand.

(4) In Ocala's Wire-to-Wire magazine each day, there are a couple of pages titled "Florida Stallion Progeny for . . . ." followed by the next two days of runners at every track in North America. The lists include progeny for current and former Florida stallions. The stallion with by far the most runners every day is Congrats, who hasn't been in Florida for years, and is now 20 years old and at WinStar Farm in Kentucky. He has 1,059 lifetime foals, with 855 starters, 259 this year.

While other stallions routinely have one to five runners each day, Congrats routinely has many more. Examples: on Friday he had 10 entered; Saturday - 11; Sunday - 6; and on sparse race days - Monday - 6; today - 5.

(5) Aside from many political factors affecting the handle at tracks around the country, numbers are down due to several other factors. They include: no on-track betting; tracks often forced to schedule less races, including as little as seven; and short fields, which greatly limits exotic bets of all kinds. For instance, wheeling a horse in a $2 exacta in an 8-horse race costs $14, in a 12-horse race it costs $22.

(6) With all the knowledgeable handicappers available from coast to coast, it's puzzling that NYRABets, on its betting site, has selections from Trackmaster, and the guy (or gal) who handles it is a decided neophyte. The comments are mainly juvenile, and almost every one of his (or her) 1-2-3 picks is dominated by the horse's Equibase speed figure. No 'horse got in trouble,' or jockey or surface switch, or change of distance. Very surprising.