Thursday Backstretch with Gordon

What’s also nice is that I now have a sponsor. No, I don’t have decals on my car or a posterboard with my picture on it that I tote around—at least not yet—but this Backstretch column is now being sponsored by Steve and Cindy Stewart’s Hunterton Sales Agency. Thank you to Steve and Cindy, I appreciate it. Almost makes me feel like Lebron or Kobe.

Back to Thursday morning, my first stop was to pick up an overnight sheet to look at Saturday’s Kentucky Futurity card which I had been too busy to do yesterday. It’s a pretty good card and you might want to look at the first race, just a $5,000 event. But among the entries is Buck I St. Pat and Lanson—not a bad race for just $5,000.

Speaking of the Futurity, I wandered over to trainer Greg Peck’s barn to see him and Muscle Hill, but only the horse was around, being looked after by assistant Enrico Robinson and caretaker Sylvia Hovde. Enrico call Greg to see if he was coming around, and although the answer was in the affirmative, after waiting a few minutes I decided to walk around. Enrico told me he had jogged Muscle Hill—the prohibitive favorite to win the Futurity—this morning and the trotter was fine.

Our retired photographer, Joe Kyle, was around this morning, and since he’s been activated for duty this week by Kathy Parker, he took a couple pics of Muscle Hill and then we wandered over to Bob McIntosh’s barn. I wanted to see the filly You See LA who won yesterday afternoon and her sister, West Of LA. West Of LA has that blazing white on her head but You See LA doesn’t, and caretaker Nicole Pedden--I apologized for using her nickname "Pit Bull" so extensively yesterday--noted that the difference is because of their sires, not the dam, Los Angeles.

I left Joe there to take a picture of the two fillies together and wandered back to the Peck barn, but the trainer still wasn’t there, so I decided to just wander. I went by Chuck Sylvester’s barn and the Hall of Famer was sitting at the table, so I came up and gave him a picture of his late son Troy, which Kathy had found. Troy was warming up a horse at the Meadowlands and Chuck knew exactly which horse it was: Even Better Odds, taken the night of the Stanley Dancer divisions. There were three blankets strung across the side of the board noting three big wins for the stable this year, and I told Chuck there was room for at least two more on top. He told me it’d be nice if he could fill the space.

On wandering out I saw Red Mile president Joe Costa and Frank Antonacci, one of the co-owners of the track, at the younger Frank’s barn. We chatted for a couple minutes, and then I finally got back to the car. I didn’t park in the official lot this morning so as I walked by Randy, who oversees the daily jigsaw puzzle of the parking lot during the day, I gave him a wave and said I’d be back later.

I went by two gas stations on the way to the office and one of them had dropped the price down to $2.17 a gallon. But that’s a far cry—and please, Dean Hoffman don’t start bawling when you read this—from a promotion last night at a station not too far from The Red Mile that had gas being sold for 49 cents a gallon for a two-hour period. I think the line of cars stretched to Cincinnati.

« Back