Talkin’ Horses With Steve Haskin
Greg: You are listening to the premiere to Talkin’ Horses with the Blood-Horse and Talkin’ Horses with the Blood-Horse is brought to you by Horse racingFanShop.com, your one stop shop for equine apparel, books, and more and we’re very, very proud to have Blood Horse as a new sponsor partner and this all new show, Talkin’ Horses with the Blood-Horse, is going to help a lot of the sports fans on Prime Sports Network educate, entertain, inform what’s going on in the Thoroughbred industry as something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time.
I’m your host, Greg DePalma and joining me each week will be Ron Mitchell. Ron, first of all, thanks for coming on with me each week because I definitely couldn’t do this alone.
Ron: Thanks, Greg. We are certainly looking forward to the opportunities here and we’re very excited from Blood Horse’s perspective of partnering with you on this.
Greg: Well, let me just let everybody know every week we’re going to have special guests that we’re going to talk to and help us to make this, as I said at the open, a very educational process and it’s going to educate me. That’s what I’m excited about.
We’ll do one a month at 12 noon and we’ll let you know, of course, every month what the situation is on the day and all that but again it’s a once a month show and then hopefully after a few months we’re going to start to go week by week, that kind of thing. So we’re really looking forward to speeding up the process, but again just let everybody know it’s once a month, not once a week but our first guest this month will be Steve Haskin and Jerry Jamgotchian.
Greg: Tell me a little bit about, first of all, our first guest which will be on in about 10 or 15 minutes, Steve Haskin. What’s the deal with Steve?
Ron: Steve is the Senior Correspondent for Blood Horse magazine and he also runs the very, very popular blog in our website called Hangin’ with Haskin. He has been at this for a long, long time and is certainly probably the, as far as racing journalism goes, the preeminent authority on all things Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown. He is interviewed a lot by not just other racing entities but mainstream publications so he’s the go to guy for Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown.
Greg: Sounds great so we got the right guest. That’s for sure for our first show. Ron: Absolutely. You know this has been a very exciting Triple Crown season, you had a different horse win the Kentucky Derby (gr. I), a different horse win the Preakness (gr. I), and a different horse win the Belmont Stakes (gr. I). You had a jockey who was suspended for seven days as a result of how he rode a horse in the Belmont which by all accounts really screwed up Animal Kingdom, the Kentucky Derby winner, in his ability to win the Belmont. We don’t know that he would have won it but certainly it was a factor in that race so it’s been a very exciting Triple Crown season even though we did not have a horse going for the Triple Crown this year. Greg: Tell us a little bit about Jammer. Ron: Jammer is a Californian who owns a lot of horses. He raced primarily in California until moving most of his stock to Kentucky a couple of years ago. He is generally always let’s say “jousting at windmills” so to speak. He files a lot of complaints, actions, litigation, whatever, primarily against racing regulators trying to defend owners’ rights and protect what he thinks is the investment he and other owners have in horses. A lot of horses run in what are called claiming races. That means that the horse runs with a price on its head. Another owner or trainer can say I want to claim that horse, they put in a claim forward--sometimes if there’s more than one, there’s just a blind draw--but if you end up claiming that horse that means you’re going to pay that person X amount whatever that claiming price was and you take possession of the horse.
Kentucky now has a rule saying that once you claim a horse like that there are restrictions on what you can do with that horse as far as racing it out of state. These things are designed to try to keep stock in the state and keep them from going elsewhere. Jammer has a horse he wanted to enter in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has now said that they will not honor these restrictions placed on this horse by Kentucky and so Jammer is continuing to challenge this Kentucky rule and a couple of years ago he’s successful. He did the same thing in California.
Greg: Tell me what’s the reason why the states have this rule. How does that benefit that states?
Ron: Well, again, if they can put restrictions saying you cannot race it outside of Kentucky that supposedly helps the Kentucky racing industry as far as keeping horses filling races, which has become a big issue in recent years as there are a lot fewer horses available to fill races.
Greg: Simple enough. But obviously the situation there is not very simple so we’ll talk to Jammer later probably about 12:45-ish and again that’s Eastern time and by the way we do have a date for our next show and it will be again on a Tuesday and again I’m assuming this is probably the third Tuesday of every month. It’s July 19th and our special guest is Donna Barton Brothers.
Ron: Yes, a lot of racing fans and even non-racing fans would know Donna. She was a jockey. She is married to a retired trainer by the name of Frank Brothers and now he works as a consultant for a major racing stable. She is known to a lot of people after a lot of the major racing broadcasts. She’s usually the one on horseback that’s interviewing the jockeys so she really knows her stuff and she is also the author of a book that’s going to be released later on this year. It’s being published by Eclipse Press and that book is called “Inside Track: An Insider’s Guide to Horse Racing” so Donna should be a very popular guest.
Greg: Alright, Ron, before we bring in our first guest, talk a little bit about your background and of course you have Talkin’ Horses show on Blood Horse, the website, BloodHorse.com, just quickly talk a little bit about the difference between that show, this show, the reasons for it, and then of course if anybody on Prime Sports Network, any of our listener base doesn’t yet have a full grasp on Blood Horse and how important Blood Horse has been to the Thoroughbred industry, maybe you can enlighten them.
Ron: First of all, Blood Horse itself, the magazine is the pre-eminent International Weekly Thoroughbred magazine and 16 years ago, maybe a little longer than that, we started what has become the horse industry’s premier website, BloodHorse.com. I’ve been a managing editor there for 16 years. It certainly is a go to place for a lot of people in the horse business not just in the U.S .but internationally.
Talkin’ Horses, we started it as just a strictly online chat but as a text only kind of thing where readers send in their questions and we would just answer them with a guest and edit that and post those. It’s morphed into more than that. It became a podcast about a year ago and now we’re in partnership with you guys so that’s how it’s evolved and we still take questions from the racing fans to submit to our guests but certainly with this new format there’ll be a lot more of you and I asking the guest our own questions and mixing it up a bit and then having, as we are today, having Jammer on.
Greg: Yeah. This particular episode we did allow a great deal of questions to come in to Blood Horse and we found out that boy there were a lot of inquisitive minds out there that wanted to know about Steve Haskin and of course that’s how big Steve is and anytime they get an opportunity to ask him a question I guess they want to jump all over that opportunity.
Ron: Having just completed the Triple Crown races is primarily the reason we have him on and we’re trying to keep the content today restricted to that and there were plenty of questions about that so some of these other questions we will not be getting but there’ll be other opportunities for that. Also, I think everyone’s more than welcome to go to Steve’s blog at BloodHorse.com and submit your questions to him there and get more of that personal feedback from him on a daily basis anyway.
Greg: Again, we got this thing going with our interview segments I just want to get your opinion quickly about this past Triple Crown season.
Ron: With a different horse winning each of those three races no one really has emerged as the leader of the class yet. I guess because the Derby is considered the most prestigious of those races--Animal Kingdom won that race--so right now I guess by a lot of accounts and we’ll find out from Steve, a lot of people consider him the leader of the 3-year old gang particularly when you consider all the problems he had in the Belmont which may have impacted his ability to show what he could do in that race. So it’s still wide open but there are a lot of horses, a lot of good 3-year olds that are out there who did not compete in the Derby or the Belmont or the Preakness and so we can see, find out from Steve’s perspective, who might be hanging in the wings there that we should watch for on down the road because there is this late summer group of races, the Haskell Invitational which is a big race run at Monmouth Park in New Jersey and the Travers Stakes which everyone calls the ‘Mid-Summer Derby” that’s run at Prestigious Saratoga racecourse in New York. So we have to wait and see probably as it gets closer end of the year to find out who really emerges as the leader of this three-year old class. Greg: Is it too early for us to start talking or getting excited about the Breeders’ Cup? I know they got early odds in the Breeders’ Cup Classic already.
Ron: Breeders’ Cup, well, again, that’s something we can find out from Steve. At least the Breeders’ Cup Classic, that’s where all these 3-year olds who for the most part through the Travers and Haskell will be running against each other and it’s usually in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, which is going to be held in early November this year at Churchill Downs in Kentucky where the 3-year olds then for the most part will probably face older horses for the first time. So that’s like when it all comes together when you really see who the best horse in America is and who the best male horses in America are. But in the Breeders’ Cup there are a total of 15 races this year for all categories of horses, fillies, and mares, young horses, old horses so it is the championship day but certainly as far as the 3-year olds that participated in the Triple Crown series, you find out what you got there.
Certainly, horse racing is year-round now. Everybody--particularly the non-core racing fans -- focus on the Triple Crown races but it’s certainly much more than that. Actually, from your listeners’ point of view, as we continue down the road with this broadcast, their learning curves will certainly be enhanced and BloodHorse.com Talkin’ Horses fans already know most of this stuff so.
Greg: Alright. Again, we’ll have a lot of that kind of stuff to touch while we’re going to have Steve on here very shortly. As I was going over the list of Triple Crown winners, of course it’s been since 1978 with Affirmed and then 1977 Seattle Slew and 1973 with Secretariat that we had a Triple Crown winner.
Ron: That’s what we’ve come to know as racing’s heyday. Just in that short period of time we had those caliber of horses all running and they were on the national scene the whole time. We’ve not seen anything like that since. We had some bump ups with Smarty Jones, Smarty Mania and that type thing but certainly nothing that could compare to that period.
GregDo you think it’s a slam dunk that Secretariat should be considered the greatest horse of all time?
Ron: Not a slam dunk. I mean you’ve got different eras. We don’t know exactly what would have happened let’s say if he had competed against Man o’War. We don’t know what would have happened if he even competed against Affirmed. It really is so subjective and we can’t say because they will never face each other so we can’t say but by all regards, certainly, when you look at what Secretariat did in the Belmont Stakes that has left an indelible image in almost everyone’s mind.
Greg: What is your-- everybody and of course and I’m sure Steve will give his opinion and everybody has an opinion—opinion on why there hasn’t been a Triple Crown winner since 1978. What’s your feeling? Is there a specific reason or reasons why you think that is?
Ron: I think just overall it’s just such a tough achievement and I just don’t think that today’s horses are up to it. Frankly, it’s three races in a short period of time vat arying distances and it really takes almost a super horse and we’ve not seen many super horses. There are several schools of thought on this. Some are that the breed is not as stout as it was in those days. I can’t say that for sure. Others say medication used in horses has led to a less durable horse, breeding patterns. There are a lot of theories out there but no one can say for sure. Certainly, I think everyone does clamor for a return to the 70’s if we could ever get back there with the same caliber of those horses.
Greg: I’ll tell you what. We’re going to try to get Jammer on because we’re not able to get Steve on right now so I’ll try to get him on the air here in the next couple of minutes. So now that the Triple Crown is over, talk about even just the average sports fan that might want to be interested in getting involved with horse racing in between the Breeders’ Cup and the Triple Crown. What would you say is the best way of them going about doing that?
Ron: Well, certainly via websites. There’s a lot of information out there and frankly for the non-racing fans if they came to our website, we update our website probably 25, 30 times a day with a lot of information. There’s a lot of racing between now and the Breeders’ Cup and what you get into are these races in July, August, September that are preps for the Breeders’ Cup so it isn’t like there’s a void. There’s a lot going on all the time. People need to engage in it.
Greg: Well, we’re finally going to get Steve Haskin on here so let’s go ahead and talk to him about a lot of the stuff that we’ve been bantering around here. Again, welcome, Steve, thanks a lot for taking the time out.
Steve: My pleasure. I didn’t know that was you. I was ignoring that phone call. I thought it was coming on a different phone.
Greg: That’s alright. Better late than never. It was only a couple of minutes. A couple of things that I was talking with Ron here about, the average sports fan that might want to get interested in horse racing, the Triple Crown is over, the Breeders’ Cup ain’t going to be for a few months, how would you advice them to get involved, get excited in between those two big parts of horse racing? What’s coming up that you think can excite them about horse racing?
Steve: Well, ideally you want to get them interested before the Triple Crown or before the Breeders’ Cup but if you have to use the window in between, I would encourage people to come out to either Saratoga or if you’re on the West Coast go out to Del Mar and just make an entire racing experience out of it. If you’re going to go out to Del Mar it’s a totally different atmosphere. You wear your flip flops and your shorts and you go out to the beach in the morning and have breakfast somewhere and go out to the track. It’s very casual. A lot of good looking people there. It’s fun. In California you really, really love that.
Saratoga is much more historical. You go out to the backstretch in the morning and you can see all the horses working on the Oklahoma backstretch or the main backstretch, go out to breakfast, go to the museum, go out to the races in the afternoon. You take a walk down Broadway and go on to some of the shops, a lot of racing memorabilia there and arts and crafts and paintings and go out to dinner at night. So the history of Saratoga is still there as it was 60, 70, 80 years ago so it’s two totally different atmospheres but that’s a great way to get interested in horse racing. Just go out to either one of those two racetracks.
Greg: Ron?
Ron: Well, I mean Steve is right. Certainly, these are all very, very nice racetracks. Anybody who goes to these tracks is going to have a great time. You’re going to see some great horse racing particularly at Saratoga and Del Mar.
Greg: Let’s talk about the Triple Crown now, Steve. It’s all over. Another Triple Crown year where we didn’t have the excitement, we haven’t had the excitement of a Triple Crown winner since 1978, give me your reasons, I’m sure you probably are asked this every year when we don’t have a Triple Crown winner, but give me your reasons why you think we haven’t had one since ’78.
Steve: Well, there are several reasons and everybody looks at the most logical one thing. No, the horses aren’t that good, the horses are more fragile right now than they used to be, the three races in five weeks is too much on a horse. I think that it’s a lot harder to win the Triple Crown right now. It’s a lot harder to win the Derby right now because of the fact that you have a 20- horse field every year, 20 horses entered every year and every one of those horses must qualify by graded stakes earnings which means that when you go into the Derby you are up against 18 or 19 top class graded stakes horses whereas in the past if you look at Affirmed and Alydar that year, if you look at Secretariat’s year, you’ll find two, three, maybe four really top class horses and you’ll have Kentucky Derby fields of 9, 10, 11 horses. And you go back into like the early 70’s where they had 17, 18 horses and 10 or 11 of them would be claimers. Literally, cheap claimers, horses that did not belong in a stakes race never mind the Kentucky Derby because anyone could run in the race there so the Derby was not as taxing then as it is now. Just to get to the Derby and accumulate enough graded earnings… once you get there you’ve got to be very lucky and you’ve got to be a full field of horses that qualify and it was not like that years ago.
Ron: Yeah, definitely. That’s a good point, Steve. It seems like we got into this era where anybody that has a good 3-0 that qualifies based on those earnings they’re in the Derby so we’re always pretty much going to see a 20-horse field and it’s lot tougher to beat 19 others than it is to beat only 8 or 9 others.
Steve: Right. You have to remember too by the way that there are a lot of good horses that don’t qualify that are late developers and those horses are going to wait to either the Preakness and Belmont so if you do get through the Derby there are a lot more quality fresh horses that you’re going to be facing in the Preakness and Belmont especially the Belmont Stakes now than you used to. When Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes he won against four horses. Citation only ran against a few horses. Now, if you’re trying for the Triple Crown you look at Smarty Jones, you look at Funny Cide, you’ve got full fields of horses there and you’ve got fresh horses. A lot of them now run in the Derby and skip the Preakness and they’re much fresher for the Belmont Stakes and you have late developers like Ruler On Ice who were getting good later on so you’ve got to now come back and beat a completely different group of horses and the ones you’ve already beaten are now fresher while you have that race in the Preakness in between so to me it is a lot tougher right now.
Greg: Considering this 20-horse field that we’re probably always going to look at in the Kentucky Derby, do you agree with the calls to drastically reduce the number of horses that are allowed to run in the Derby or do you think it’s any owner’s right?
Steve: Actually, I don’t. I mean logic says yes but I just don’t think you can do it. Maybe I’m looking at it from a purest point of view, from a historical point of view but the way I look at it is this the horse’s only shot in his life to obtain the immortality that goes with winning the Derby and it’s hard to deprive 6 horses of that if you’re going to lower the field to 14. You know you can try and make it a more fair race or you can leave it to some mystical event where you need the Derby gods to be smiling down on you. If you do lower it to 14 you cannot let the field be decided on the horses graded earnings in 2-year olds sprint races I don’t think. I think you need a more balanced field than what they’ve accomplished as a 3-year old. You can’t have 2-year old form trump big performances in races like the Florida Derby, Wood Memorial, Sanita Derby, Arkansas Derby. You have to find a happy medium to balance it out so maybe I’ll just use half the earnings that a 2-year-old accumulates in 3-year olds sprint races. But as far as reducing the number of horses now--I think the Derby is an event more than it is a horse race--and if a Derby god is smiling on you or you are so far in a way the best horse then the Derby gods will find a way to let you win as they’ve done in several other years. Looking back, Frances Genter obviously with Unbridled. Nobody was going to beat Mrs. Genter that day when you saw what happens on TV. I say, look, leave the races alone and event and not to deprive any of these horses and their owners and trainers of possible once in a lifetime situation.
Greg: Steve Haskin joining us here on Talkin’ Horses with the Blood-Horse and we’ve got a lot of email questions from our Blood Horse readers, Steve. One, Jennifer wants to know now that the Triple Crown races had been run, what horse most impressed you and why in any one of the Triple Crown races?
Steve: It would have to be definitely Animal Kingdom. First of all, Animal Kingdom is the one horse that actually dominated his field in the Kentucky Derby and he did it as a very lightly raced horse who’d never run on dirt before. So what he accomplished in that race, in a race where they closed very, very fast--his final quarter and final half is the second fastest in Derby history-- second only to Secretariat. So I just think that he impressed me the most. He had a bad start in the Preakness. If he had been closer to the pace it might have been different, but he did have every chance to win and finished a solid second, and then in the Belmont Stakes was a total disaster when he clipped heels, almost went down, and then John Velazquez lost an iron. And on that racetrack, you could not make up ground and he’s floundering back in last place while his jockey is trying to find his foot to get back into the stirrups again.
