What’s your mood? Laid back? Then click Breeze 100.7 FM to listen to “lite and refreshing” background music while you read today’s Insider. Upbeat? Then Energy 106 FM is your thing. Two of the top DJs at those stations led last Saturday’s fun track walk pictured below.

Top o' the week . . .

Hats off to racing prodigy Rob MacLennan. He predicted in his first column last week that Algorithms could run down prohibitive favourite Hansen in the $400,000 Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream Sunday. And he was right. Did you cash the $16 exactor? So what's his take on this weekend's Kentucky Derby preps? See Destination: Derby below. And what else is shakin'?

• Shadow or no shadow? Happy Groundhog Day!

• Mother's Day Brunch tickets are now on sale! Phone 885-3330.

• How will Black Caviar handle tougher company tomorrow?

• His pick-4 wins would have made his late brother envious!
• Is "Luck" a loser?

• Super Bowl Sunday means earlier Santa/Golden Gate starts

• What famous jockey misjudged Kentucky Derby finish line?

DO IT! $200 STILL AT STAKE IN TONIGHT'S PICK-3 AT DELTA. (1) Predict the winner of race 6. (2) Predict the pick-3 in races 6 to 8. Send picks in the subject line of your email to theinsider@ASDowns.com by 8 p.m. tonight. Basic prizes: $20 and $200 in wagering vouchers increased by $20 each if present at Friday's announcement of winner(s) between 8 and 9 p.m. in the Race Book. Congrats to George McLean, drawn from five correct predictors of race 6 last week. (You have one week to pick up your $20 in bets in the VLT lounge, George.) Good luck to all!

ENTER BY 6 PM TONIGHT: HOW HIGH WILL THE JETS FLY IN FEB? With the experience of January’s picks under your belt, predict (1) the number of games the Jets will win in February (they play 14: eight of them at home) and (2) predict the total number of goals they will score and email to theinsider@ASDowns.com by 6 p.m. tonight, when they play Tampa. A certified Angus beef buffet for two and $50 in betting vouchers is at stake plus the knowledge that you’re the man (or woman)! In last month’s contest, the Jets won four of the 12 contest games and scored 19 goals making Ken Biegun the contest winner (he predicted four wins and 21 goals). Way to go, Ken! It came down to a winning shoot-out against the Flyers Tuesday.

Live racing
kicks off May 6
___________

   PHONE 885-3330 NOW

        for brunch tickets

       for Mother's Day,

Father's Day, Derby Day.

               (Sells out quickly.)

Live racing begins Sunday, May 6, the day after the Kentucky Derby. Most racing will be the customary WED-FRI-SAT 7:00 p.m. schedule, with holiday racing and some special Sunday cards at 1 p.m. One big change: Two Saturday afternoon cards in June while the Red River Ex plays next door to avoid heavy traffic at night.

            _________________

The training track and Equiciser open four weeks from today: March 1.

Invigorating and fun: great way to start a Saturday!

First off, track walks will continue at 10 a.m. each Saturday, an hour before the "I won big" 11 a.m. workshop. Just show up. Above, last Saturday's special "walk 'n' rock" excursion was headed by top jocks from Energy 106 and its sister station, Breeze 100.7. In the inset, JD Francis (left) from Energy hams it up with Stan "drive man" Kubicek from The Breeze. That's JD in front of the van in the big picture, too. Both DJs raved about the good time they had which included lessons in horseplaying at the workshop that followed. In his very first bet ever, JD was pumped by the fact he almost picked a triactor. Kubicek comments on the walk here (Downs Facebook site) and here (Breeze Facebook site).

Doing his brother's memory proud
John Clement hits two fat pick-4s

John Clement
Brother of late city councillor

The late city councillor, Bill Clement, a regular at the Downs until his death in May of 2010, would be proud--and likely envious--of his brother, John, who's been nailing some impressive pick-4s lately including $8,100 at Santa Anita last Friday for a $112 outlay and, in December, $7,800 at the Fair Grounds. His Fair Grounds win happened to be the same pick-4 won by a local retired cabbie and mentioned at the time in The Insider. His brother loved to play pick-4s, too, but could often be heard mumbling that he was snake-bitten when it came to getting all four legs correct. He mostly just got three.

While savouring his Santa Anita victory and buying drinks for friends in the Race Book Friday, John recounted how his brother often played hooky from city hall and from his business (installing swimming pools, which John is also involved in) by playing one job against the other. "He would tell the folks at city hall he had to leave to attend to his pool business and he would tell people in his business he had to go to city hall. But I'd drop into the track for a racing form or something and find him here!" That happened a lot, said John, whose arm is in a sling as he recovers from an operation on his shoulder to repair a torn rotator cuff suffered in a fall. Good luck in getting that shoulder healed, John, and continued success nailing those pick-4s! I can almost hear your brother muttering something about your having the luck he wished HE had.

Tomorrow's competition will be tougher
Black Caviar looks for win #18 against Group One rivals

Black Caviar wins #17 last Thursday
Black Caviar, the unbeaten Australian mare who wins without trying, will be facing her toughest test in some time tomorrow at Caulfield in Victoria when she attempts to win #18 against group 1 rivals in the $400,000 Orr Stakes. The race will be televised tomorrow night. This comes just eight days after she chalked up her 17th win in effortless fashion at Moonee Valley last Thursday (mistakenly reported in the last Insider as taking place Friday). She was 1-9 on the odds board that night and her five rivals were all 99-1.

Watch last week's win here. (Click track "C,"
click Jan. 26 and click race 4.)

Black Caviar's schedule calls for one more race in Australia before being shipped to Dubai to race on World Cup Day April 1. Her connections also have plans to race her at the Royal Ascot in England in June and the July Cup at Newmarket in July. She has yet to be really tested.

Quick bits . . .
Manitoba Jockey Club pres gets long-distance thrill
If you can't be in Phoenix, where it's been sunny and hot, the next best thing is having your horse win there, and at big odds, so you're also cashing a few bucks on it back home in Winnipeg. So it was last Wednesday as Manitoba Jockey Club president Harvey Warner saw his 5-year-old gelding Barramoon go gate to wire as the longest shot on the board to win the first race, a $3,200 claimer, and pay $42.40. There were some tense moments at the gate when the original jockey, Tammi Piermarini, had to be replaced by Anne Von Rosen after the horse threw its head back, striking her in the face. Barramoon was bred in Ontario and is trained by Blair Miller. Barramoon (28-8-1-6) broke his maiden under Larren Delorme at ASD in June, 2010.

BETS "BLIND," YET WINS MORE THAN HE LOSES: A very good harness handicapper also likes to test his luck by betting "blind" on any horse from anywhere from time to time--and

Braedon Humphrey
Hockey concussion
had him sleeping
for a month
I can't believe his luck. Sunday, he bet three races blind and won two of them--including a 17-1 horse at Fair Grounds he thought "looked pretty" (he put $20 on the nose) and a winner and exactor at Woodbine harness. In total, he won about $600. And I've seen him do it before. He doesn't do it often but when he does, he's successful more often than not. Must have played with horseshoes as a baby.

CONCUSSION IS NO MYSTERY TO SELLER: Braedon Humphrey, 17, a mutuel ticket seller you can't miss because of his impressive clutch of dreadlocks, knows from personal experience what hockey concussions are all about. He quit playing organized hockey at 12, he said, after his head was bumped upward and he fell backwards on the ice. He said he slept "all day every day for a month" recuperating. He was also turned off hockey, he said, "because the coach was getting too serious" about the game.

DRF TOURNEY: $1 MAKES HIM A MILLIONAIRE The last race last Saturday at Golden Gate will forever be etched on the brain of Michael Beychok, a political consultant from Baton Rouge, LA, because picking the winner increased his tournament bankroll just enough--by $1--to win the $1 million top prize in the annual two-day DRF/NTRA horseplayer tournament at Treasure Island casino in Las Vegas. He needed the 3-1 Glorious Dancer to edge out Dave Flanzbaum, 45, of Rolling Meadows, Ill. who had been on the lead for much of the tourney. Beychok's concluding bankroll was $238.60 and Flanzbaum's was $237.60. His runner-up prize was $150,000. The 430 entrants placed $2 win/place wagers on 30 horses. Four players from the Downs will have a chance to win about one-third that amount later this month in a tournament at the Orleans.

IS "LUCK" A LOSER? The dark, sinister "Luck" HBO series shot at Santa Anita and starring Dustin Hoffman as a gangster just released from jail, somehow left something to be desired in its first episode Sunday, despite rave reviews from some quarters. The often incomprehensible mumbling made it difficult to follow and the characters who won the multi-million-dollar pick-6 didn't look like anyone I've ever known or met at any race track. If they exist at all, they're few and far between. At least viewers had a few chuckles, such as the reason why a goat, a companion for a horse, needed to walk bow-legged. Let's see if I warm up to the series in subsequent episodes.

Neck ‘n Neck should pull away at Tampa Saturday

Repeat after me: Todd Pletcher. Got it? Good! Now that you know his name, remember to love it as he leads the charge of trainers looking for this year’s Kentucky Derby winner.

Even though this handicapper predicted Pletcher's Algorithms could run down Hansen in the Holy Bull last Sunday, don't give too much value to that performance. It was just one win in a six-horse field in the slop on a track he has already proven he loves. On the other side, don’t discount Hansen. He stumbled out of the gate and rankly pulled Ramon Dominguez to the lead. Let’s see if he improves in his second start off the layoff or what happens when he returns to Kentucky. The most impressive performance Sunday, though, had to be Pletcher's colt, El Padrino, scoring a two-length victory over the highly-regarded colt Take Charge Indy, earning a 100 Beyer speed figure. Look for El Padrino in the Fountain of Youth Stakes or Risen Star Stakes at the end of February.

This weekend's top preps: (1) The Robert B. Lewis at Santa Anita features Bob Baffert's Liaison, the CashCall Futurity winner. (2) The Sam F. Davis at Tampa Bay Downs: Ian Wilkes' Neck 'n Neck should be tough to beat. He comes off a second-place finish to what is arguably Pletcher’s top horse, Discreet Dancer, in an allowance race at Gulfstream. (3) The Withers Stakes in New York: Alpha should command respect at the mutuel windows coming off his Count Fleet win. (4) The WEBN Stakes at Turfway, the track at which Animal Kingdom got his prep work done on the way to winning last year's Derby.

NEXT WEEK: The 7f Hutcheson Stakes at Gulfstream Park. And who isn't anticipating the comeback race of Union Rags who was just beaten by Hansen in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile? That date is getting closer.

TRIVIA TEASER: Which of these Hall of Fame jockeys was suspended for misjudging the finish line in the Kentucky Derby? See answer at end of column.
(a) Jerry Bailey (b) Willie Shoemaker (c) Laffit Pincay Jr. (d) Gary Stevens

Reg hits big time; wins first tourney

Business analyst Reg Pluchinske is no stranger to winning the smaller contests held at the Downs--he's won many--but last Saturday he hit the big time for the first time, winning the first of 11 monthly tournaments that will determine the 2012 Handicapper of the Year. After betting $2 win/place on 10 races of his choice in the Player's Choice horseplayer tournament, he posted a bankroll of $76.80 and collected the top prize of $500 and a trophy. He edged out two top ASD handicappers, both of whom in the past have won trips to Las Vegas to compete in $1 million tournaments there: Trevor Phelps (bankroll $69.50, won $250) and Jeff Rozmus (bankroll $62.10, won $100). Good playing, guys! Here is the list of all players and their points, based on the NASCAR point system. Next tournament: Saturday, Feb. 25.

FELIX TOPS 55 TO WIN 5-ALIVE SATURDAY: Kudos to Felix Berthelette, welder, fisher, golfer, for shutting out 54 other entrants to win the Saturday night 5-Alive Challenge and the $150 jackpot on Woodbine harness, surely a momentous win. The horse he picked to win the final leg paid $10.60. In other contests, retired teacher Rick Zaretsky collected $25 in betting vouchers as consolation winner of Double Trouble Saturday. On Friday, retired business owner Alice Bowman won a consolation prime rib buffet for two in 5-Alive and Al “Smitty” Smith, a one-time soldier, won $51 in the betting spree.

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Looking forward to . . .

Early post times on Super Bowl Sunday

Look for earlier starts for western U.S. tracks on Super Bowl Sunday. First post is at Aqueduct at 11:20 a.m. and other eastern tracks start at their regular times but Santa Anita's first post is 1 p.m. and Golden Gate is 1:15 p.m. Sunland is the last to begin--its first post is 1:30 p.m. If you're enjoying the Super Bowl in high def at the track in the evening, you can play harness racing from Fraser, Rideau, Windsor and Flamboro and Australian racing begins at 7 p.m.

SANTA ANITA FEATURES STRUB STAKES SATURDAY: Four-year-olds vie for $200,000 in this storied grade 2 event at 1 1/8 miles.

DELTA FEATURES $1 MILLION IN STAKES SATURDAY: Louisiana-breds compete in six major stakes races including the $200,000 Louisiana Premier Night Championship for 4-year-olds and up at 1 1/16th miles.

TO BE SENTENCED TODAY on vote-rigging and fraud charges in Louisiana is Sean Alfortish, former president of that state's Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association (HBPA). He had pleaded guilty to raiding the horsemen's medical fund to take trips and buy an expensive sound system and rigging the 2008 HBPA election to surround himself with horsemen who supported his leadership. He faces five years in prison and/or $250,000 in fines.

ANSWER TO TRIVIA TEASER: (b) Willie Shoemaker in the 1957 Kentucky Derby. He received a 10-day suspension for careless riding when he eased Gallant Man before the finish line, only to have Iron Liege, Bill Hartack riding, blow past him to post the win. (With thanks to race historian Bob Gates.)

See you Saturday! Walk at 10, talk at 11!

Go Giants!

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