Local Color

Hard Spun faces off against Teuflesberg on the 13th in the Lecomte Stakes in his first foray outside the local area. In my opinion they are an intriguing matchup: three-year-olds who happen to be approaching this race from opposite ends of the spectrum — Hard Spun has never had to work too hard in a race, whereas Teuflesberg has latent talent that he’s just figuring out what to do with. It’s nice to see Mario Pino keep the mount on Hard Spun, but it should be a fun race in any event.

We can expect to see Nobiz Like Shobiz in the near future as well and I’m hoping Great Hunter makes it back to the track soon.

Keeping close to home, Jason Shandler politely answers a question from a racing newbie on his NTRA.com blog about why Smarty Jones will not be coming out of retirement (no!) and early retirements in general but also mentions that Little Red Feather is bringing the party to Philly — this is interesting news indeed.

I’ve delved into it a bit further and found an overlooked article from October mentioning that John Servis will be training for them on this coast. Shandler points out that the idea that racing is meant to be fun (indeed!) has been a big part of LRF’s success; I’ve mentioned before that it would be a boon to the game if a group of intelligent (and telegenic) women owned a good horse. I’m happy to volunteer. Did I mention I photograph well, particularly in winner’s circles?

If only I could get a partnership group together that would buy into my horses-named-for-obscure-archaeological-sites plan…but I digress.

With the changes in the Breeders’ Cup (it’s about time they had a Dirt Mile, but I’m more interested in the Juvenile Turf), it’s a great chance to get more new fans on board.


Tags:
Horse Racing, Hard Spun, Little Red Feather