Apologies for the lack of posting this week; I’m still down in Mexico enjoying the first significant amount of sunshine I’ve seen since August. (Got to love the weather in the Pacific Northwest.) I'm coming back this Saturday afternoon, and I'm going to miss all of the racing that day.
-I suppose it’s a sign of the times we live in - an era of instant information and constant connectivity - because it’s hard to take a vacation where you can’t even get a basketball score from the night before in a timely manner...which makes you feel completely cut-off from the world. Not that I’m complaining – it’s good to un-plug once and a while. But it’s also hard to do.
-So Dialed In comes up second in the allowance race at Gulfstream last Sunday in a race against older horses - just another strange twist in this year's road to the Kentucky Derby. I suppose we'll find out what that race did (or did not) do for Dialed In when he returns in the Florida Derby next month.
-I got online to pull up the entries to the Timely Writer and the Tampa Bay Derby this morning. I’ll start off by writing that I was pretty wrong about how many horses would challenge Uncle Mo at Gulfstream on Saturday, and about the quality. Sure, it’s not the Tampa Bay Derby, but Madman Diaries, Rocking Out and Rattlesnake Bridge are decent enough challengers. I still hard to see anyone other than Uncle Mo wins, and I think he'll do so in a cakewalk, but this will have to do for now.
-The Grade 3 Palm Beach at Gulfstream is a big prep for Pluck if his connections still desire to run him at the Curragh in the Irish 2,000 Guineas.
-The Tampa Bay Derby, even without Uncle Mo, looks pretty nice. How Brethren performs after his visually impressive/disappointing figure run in the Sam F. Davis will be quite telling.