Gulfstream Park came through Irma unscathed and racing will resume with two cards and 25 races on Saturday and Sunday. There were 700 horses evacuated from the track's barn area, mostly to Palm Meadows, and they began to return on Tuesday. 

    The Saturday program kicks off at 12:15 and consists of 13 races and 134 entrants, headlined by the $100,000 Miss Gracie Stakes for 3-year-old Florida-bred fillies at 7 1/2 furlongs on the turf, and the $50,000 Sea of Grass, an overnight handicap for fillies and mares at one mile.

    Sunday's card will have 12 races and 105 entrants with a 12:45 post time and features a pair of $50,000 overnight handicaps for 3-year-olds and up.  

    SIXTH WINNER FOR SOLDAT - The latest Florida freshman sire to get a winner is Woodford Thoroughbreds' Soldat, who bagged No. 6 when Son Son Son scored at Camarero Race Track in Puerto Rico on Sept. 3. The filly bred in New York by Marie Bates is 1-1-1 in three starts.

    Soldat is now just one winner behind Pleasant Acres' Treasure Beach, who had a second-place finisher yesterday when Treble in Paradise, at odds of 17-1, made her debut at Thistledown. Treasure Beach leads the frosh sires in Florida with seven winners and is nearing $340,000 in progeny earnings. Pleasant Acres also stands the second-place sire, Brethren, with $227,000 in earnings; he has five winners. Eleven of Florida's 14 frosh sires already have at least one winner.

    BOUNCE THIS - Like so many of the younger set who believe that the world began on the day they were born, today's TV equine analysts and those writing for the major publications have taken many of the old traditional sports terms and trashed them to suit their own needs. No longer does a baseball player reach first on an error, he just "reaches." No longer is a college football player a freshman, he's a "true freshman," so as not to confuse him with a false freshman.  

    In racing, the old traditional "wire-to-wire" has been replaced by many with gate-to-wire, which is bogus, because in order to go gate-to-wire a horse has to have the lead on the first jump out of the gate and never relinquish it, which probably happens maybe 10 percent of the time. But the TV guys and gals see a "1" at the first quarter and automatically relate that the horse went gate-to-wire.

    The "bounce" is  another area that is prevalent among the TV and publication groups, the theory that if a horse runs a tough race he or she will "bounce," or run poorly, if he or she comes back too soon. The problem is that nobody has been able to come up with a time frame as to when the bounce no longer applies. Time after time, analysts - and trainers, too - discuss if a horse's next race is coming up too soon, even when the race is four weeks away.

    These analysts never discuss all the runners who defy the bounce theory, because there are no rules involved. They just guess. The truth is, if you can't pin down the length of time any horse needs to recover from a hard race, then you don't have a legitimate theory. The late Dr. Ron Chak, who was the veterinarian for venerable Ocala Stud Farm for decades, told me that all you have to do for a horse is make sure he or she gets enough electrolytes into the system.

    I remember a horse trained by Dick Dutrow a few years ago named Laysh Laysh Laysh. This horse once ran three times in 11 days in New York and won all three. Talk about bouncing the bounce. 

    I brought this all up because of a 2-year-old named Driven by History, a gelding by Two Step Salsa currently campaigning at Presque Isle Downs. While a slew of 2-year-olds haven't started yet, and many more have started once or twice, Driven by History has started six times in the span of two months and six days, the latest coming this past Monday. He went off at 70 cents to a dollar with Antonio Gallardo and scored by a length, raising his record to 3-3-0 in those six races. He's won two in a row and three of his last four while earning $66,200 without benefit of running in a stakes race. I assume he might rectify that shortly.

   By the way, for the "gate-to-wire" people, if you really feel the need to be precise, the correct term should be "gate-to-mirrored image."   

      

     

 

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