Clifton Pond Takes the Cake

While mired in last place in our little contest :), the owner of Clifton Pond Stables, my sister Becky, has gained a most prestigious award from the American Library Association.

Becky has been awarded the very first National LBI George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg Preservation Award. Among other things, this award-named in honor of her mentor in preservation at the University of Kentucky Library, honors her work in preserving, digitizing and making searchable the Daily Racing Form dating back to its beginning.

Becky has lived this project for several years now and views it as a life's work. For a person to be able to scan the ages of pages and look up Triple Crown horses from 100 years ago by simply amazing. Becky, with her vision and passion, is making this happen.

http://www.ala.org/ala/pressreleases2008/february2008/ryder.htm

Andrew Takes the Helm

Genes. I guess that's the explanation. Genes.


Andrew Ryder has 'sploded onto the prognosticating scene with a strong week three performance that leaves him ranked at about #400 Internationally out of about 15,000 players. We haven't seen that kind of action in the Ryder family since The Annoyed Handicapper stalked the top 100 several years ago.

There are a couple of huge races this weekend, and Andrew looks poised to remain on top if everything works out according to his plan. But if there's one thing that we all understand, this race is volatile.

BTW...Whoever Philip Martinez is, I'm very disappointed with the weak stable name, Princess Shea. Being a family of New York Yankee fans growing up, the idea of a Met guy really bothers the socks off us.

League Rank	Score	Stable Name	Player	Hometown
1	50	Walkin' Tall	Andrew Ryder	fairfax
2	40	SCHANUCI	John Ryder	Salem
3	33	Antilles Stable	Elizabeth Ryder	Roanoke
3	33	Princess Shea	philip martinez	christiansburg
5	32	Miracles	Thom Ryder	Roanoke
6	27	Yes We Can	John Wallace	Berryville
7	24	Creasy Greens	Thomas Ryder	Roanoke
8	22	APACHE_ROSE_PEACOCK	Andrew Ryder	fairfax
9	16	Clifton Pond Stable	Rebecca Ryder	Lexington

Spend a Buck

Spend a Buck

February 15 was a special evening for my wife’s family. As many of you know, my father-in-law has been hospitalized since September. He had a triple bypass and valves replaced. The initial surgery went well, and he was able to return home for a week in late September. His stay at home was short-lived. One of the harvested veins for the bypass was taken from his breastbone area. After doctor’s harvested the vein, the reattachment of the blood supply to that area was unsuccessful. That didn’t become evident until about a week after the initial surgery. It was then that doctor’s discovered the problem, and by that time his breastbone had essentially dissolved, dying from lack of oxygen. The only recourse (acceptable to today’s medical policy) was to place him in a coma then remove what was left of his breastbone. That surgery was “successful”, but it has left him with an extremely difficult uphill battle just to regain the most basic physical abilities. Currently, he is staying at a rehab facility where today for the first time since October, he was able, painstakingly, to lift his upper torso up and swing his largely unresponsive legs off the edge of the bed. He’s certainly not out of the woods, but he is making slow progress.

That made the day quite special, but that wasn’t all. My wife and her sisters and brother had concocted a plan to surprise their mother with an 80^th birthday celebration at a friend’s house. A wonderful family friend at Smith Mountain Lake, Dee Dee Bondurant, donated her beautiful home and an excuse for getting her to the party. My wife’s brother drove 14 hours from Mississippi to be there, and her three sisters were all there as well along with many family friends from the lake area. Needless to say, my mother-in-law was very surprised and well pleased.

As I wandered around Dee Dee’s beautiful home, located on a small peninsula sticking out into the main channel at Smith Mountain Lake near the S curves, I admired her incredible collection of equine art. On every wall, she has numbered prints from Jenness Cortez. These realistic paintings are beautiful. Cortez specialized in painting Derby winners, but she also painted other famous racehorses, too. Dee Dee has many of the prints, I saw Lady Secret, John Henry, Spend a Buck, Ferdinand, and Alysheba. She probably had more, but those were featured in the living room.

In addition to the Cortez collection, Dee Dee also had several numbered Richard Stone Reeves prints. I noticed Phar Lap and PROFILES OF COURAGE – FOREGO, JOHN HENRY & KELSO. I was absolutely blown away by her collection.

Soon after I made my discovery, I sought out Dee Dee and asked her how she came to having such a fine collection of equine art. She explained to me that she and her first husband used to live in Middleburg, VA and breed horses. She wasn’t specific about what type, but I believe she was into steeplechase horses. She didn’t say why she got out of the business, but she did say that they really didn’t interest her anymore. Further more, she spoke about selling some or all of the collection. She thought she might put them on eBay or try to find the person who inherited the print number for the Cortez collection in the more recent years. I quietly thought to myself that one of my sisters, brother, or family friends might be interested in adopting her artwork.

All I know is that the Cortez pieces were stunning in their realism. The Reeves art was classic.

Light My Fire

Just in case you haven't seen it yet, Pyro became the horse of the moment with his stunning last to first romp down the home stretch in the Risen Star at Fairgrounds on Saturday. His performance was nothing short of electrifying down the stretch.



With his astounding final quarter mile in 22 and 3/5 seconds (even while gearing down in the last few strides), Pyro leaped ahead of War pass as the horse to beat come May.

For us, however, there's a contest brewing. Once again, the ARFTCHC is sponsoring a fantasy stable league. In our little contest, Schanuci has bolted to an early lead with 21 points (2337 place overall) in the first weekend of racing. Miracles [Merkels] follow with 18 points. Clifton Pond Stables have 16 points. Creasy Greens trail the field with 10 points. For some reason, RFTR has not scored Yes We Can.

A word about our contest, Creasy Greens and Miracles are owned by the creator of this blog (me). When I was selecting horses, I inadvertently selected my tenth horse and verified before I double-checked. As a result, I left Pyro off my original stable. RFTR does not allow you to de-select once your stable is verified, so rather than suffer the whole competition without my second favorite horse, I chose to create another stable.

I initially chose the name Creasy Greens for my first stable because they remind me of early spring. Creasy Greens are also known in some places as Upland Cress. In Greene County, where I used to live on a dairy farm, we'd go out beside the stream next to the gas plant and pick the tender greens in the early spring and boil the tarnation out of them to create a spinach-like salad.

So when I blew my first stable, I had to come up with another local spring-time name. That's when I thought of Miracles. Miracles [Merkels] are known to most of the world as Morel mushrooms. However, in Greene County, these prized mushrooms are simply merkels, and their locations are jealously guarded secrets by highly conditioned Miracle hunters during the wet phase of spring.

It's not too late to join our little league.

First you need to visit
http://www.roadtotheroses.com/G=74/logout.phtml

Once there. Pick your ten horses, two jockeys, and two trainers. Verify your stable. Activate your horses for the weekend's races and join our league.

Here is all the info you need to join us:

League Name: ARFTCHC
League Identifier: 2883231050
Activation Code: 3469891059

Contenders

I've been rooting through online publications and trying to figure out what 3 year old horses will be the big players in the upcoming spring prep season riding up to the Kentucky Derby. One method I use is simply compiling top ten/twenty lists from nationally known handicappers, media reporters, etc into one spreadsheet, then averaging out the rankings to see which horses have the most support (buzz).

This year, I've tracked down the following people to include as data sources:

Ashley Walker, John Asher, Jill Byrne, Dan Shapiro, Steve Haskin, Jennie Rees, Rick Bozich, Eric Crawford, David Grening, Cliff Guilliams, Jay Privman, and Gary West.

I'll try to add other experts to my spreadsheet as time marches on.

After compiling and averaging, here's the list of hot horses as of January 31, 2008.

	Top Horses
1	War Pass
2	Pyro
3	Into Mischief
4	Court Vision
5	El Gato Malo
6	Colonel John
7	Monba
8	Anak Nakal
9	Tale Of Ekati
10	Majestic Warrior
11	Z Fortune
12	Cowboy Cal
13	Etched
14	Z Humor
15	Blackberry Road
16	Crown of Thorns
17	Turf War
17	Country Star
19	Visionaire
20	Check It Twice
21	Cool Coal Man
22	Atoned

Predictably, War pass was on just about everyone's top 5; however, he was not the favorite in most cases. Court Vision has a lot of support as the top contender right now.