The Canadian Sportsman
Archive for October, 2009
October 08, 2009
As the bidding kept going skyward, trainer Erv Miller admits he was getting a little nervous.
Sure, the filly in the ring on the opening night of the Lexington-Selected Yearling Sale was the full-sister to Hall of Fame superstar and Canadian media darling Somebeachsomewhere (shown setting a 1:46.4 record in Lexington).
Sure, she looked the part.
Sure, Miller’s owner, John Carver, was game.
But, Someheartsomewhere is an offspring of Mach Three. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but to be fair, there are stallions just in Ontario with better stats.
Plus, Miller is based in Springfield, IL, which is a bit of a haul to Ontario to race.
As the bidding climbed past the $150,000 Miller thought was the top end of what Someheartsomewhere would command, the trainer said, “I kept trying to talk (Carver) out of it a little. I said, ‘She’s a Canadian-bred Mach Three. She needs to go to Canada.’”
Carver and partner Ron Michelson would not be deterred. When the hammer fell at $210,000 (U.S.), Someheartsomewhere was theirs — and, by extension, Miller’s.
Standing in his shedrow in the backstretch of The Red Mile the next morning, Miller said he was thrilled to add The Beach’s little sister to his operation.
“She’s a very good-looking filly. I don’t know if I’d consider her looking just like (Somebeachsomewhere), but she’s a big, strong, well-conformed filly,” Miller said. “She’s a Mach Three, but it didn’t stop Somebeachsomewhere from being a good horse, right? Every part’s there.”
Of course, Miller said he hopes Someheartsomewhere turns out to be stakes-calibre filly, but the upside if that doesn’t happen is she has both the lucrative Ontario Sires Stakes program and a broodmare career to fall back on.
“They were just really excited about the filly because of her residual value as a broodmare, also,” Miller said of the owners.
He said his job now is to avoid letting the success of Somebeachsomewhere influence how the sister is trained.
“My thing is, you don’t want to beat them up too quickly because of that. That’s what seems to happen. Because of that, you put some pressure on and think they can go more than they need to go at the time.”
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October 07, 2009
Everything costs too much these days.
Where do they get off charging $6 for a box of cereal or five bucks for a brick of cheese? For the love of Pete, I’ve got to take out a line of credit just to buy a box of no-name laundry detergent these days.
I remember when I could go to the grocery store with a crisp $20 bill and come out with a couple nice cuts of meat, a jug of milk, a quart of butter pecan ice cream and Bernie’s woman supplies, and I’d still have enough left over to wash, wax and gas up my car on the way home.
Today, if I’m lucky, 20 bucks gets me two bananas, a loaf of bread, frozen fish sticks and a roll of paper towels. On top of that, it costs me 10 cents to buy two plastic bags to carry it home in. It’s highway robbery.
Charging for plastic bags? I guess there are no free lunches anymore. My tree-hugging son Robbie says it’s all about the environment and being ‘green.’ I think it’s about the grocery store getting more ‘green’, if you know what I mean.
I’ve been ‘recycling’ plastic bags around my house for years. That’s what I always used to pick up after my dog Patches so my yuppie neighbour Christopher doesn’t ruin his fancy Italian penny loafers by stepping in a steaming pile of junk that Patches left on his lawn.
I’ve been doing that to be nice all these years, and to smooth over neighbour-relations after the unfortunate doggie-do slip ‘n slide incident of ’98, but I won’t be doing it at five cents a pop. The yuppie is just going to have to watch his step from now on.
But what really chaps me is getting ripped off at the track, and I don’t just mean the 62 per cent takeout or whatever it’s up to now. The slots players get everything comped, but I’m playing $2.50 for a thimble of hot chocolate. Cripes, it’s just water and powder and it’s not even hot half the time. For that price, I may as well just go to Starbuckers with Christopher and blow my whole pension because they at least put it in a full-size cup.
Unless this magical racetrack hot chocolate is handmade cocoa flown in first-class from a chocolaterie in Belgium, I don’t want to be paying more than 75 cents for it. Better yet, make it free because I’ll be spending a few bucks tonight at your ticket windows.
Hot chocolate for $2.50, are you kidding me? It’s a king’s ransom. I could be buying 50 plastic bags for that amount.
But I won’t.
October 07, 2009
The latest installment from my weekly Guelph Mercury column…
It’s not exactly the same level of limelight as last summer when Guelph’s Paul MacDonell was driving Somebeachsomewhere, one of the greatest standardbreds to ever pull a sulky, but Fast Pay has been a special horse in his own right.
Fast Pay has been the star of the Ontario Sires Stakes program’s three-year-old pacing colt division, winning all three of the $130,000 Gold Finals on his schedule and besting The Beach in one area…
Click on the words “Guelph Mercury” to read the article in its entirety.
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