The Daily Double at Santa Anita

First off lets vent. At Santa Anita on Sunday we saw perhaps the worst ride of young Joe Talamo's career and also perhaps the worst call the Stewards at Santa Anita have made in some time. While the Stews are often making bad calls, we are quite disappointed in Talamo's ride aboard Aggie Engineer.

Now let's understand one thing. We don't often rail on jockeys. Simply put, we personally don't have the guts to do what they do so we tend to cut them slack when it comes to the rides they turn in. For the most part, the jocks around these parts do an outstanding job so we don't have to bitch too much but when you restrain a free running front runner 3-4 wide the entire trip with fractions of :23 3/5, :48 3/5 and 1:13 2/5 you don't give your steed much of a chance to win the race. Perhaps that's why Aggie Engineer check in a well beaten third in Sunday's Grade III San Antonio.

As far as the Stews go, well that's another story. They continue to amaze people every day of the week with the calls they make and lack thereof. It seems that they have turned into "handicappers" and now base their calls on what they "think" the horse was going to do. Sunday's 7th race was such a race when #3 Holy Flapper came out in upper stretch and herded out #4 Magic Launch, taking him right out of the race. Hold on, though. The Stews said it didn't cost #4 Magic Launch and that the original order of finish wasn't effected. What? How do they know? Magic Launch lost the place by less than a length and was actually re-rallying after the incident took place. A foul is a foul and horses that commit one should be sat down. There should be none of this hocus-pocus that is now being used. Just another thing wrong with the current state of horse racing in California, the Stewards. Let's just call them what they deserve to be called ... Manny, Moe and Jack.

In Saturday's Grade I $250,000 Las Virgenes Turbulent Descent, the Mike Puype trained filly lost the first race of her career when defeated by Zazu from the John Sadler stable. Ridden to victor by Joel Rosario, the daughter of Tapit got a perfect ground saving ride and was notching up career win number two from six tries. She returned $10.

Twirling Candy took another big step forward to a date with the Santa Anita Big 'Cap with a solid, facile win in Saturday's Grade II $200,000 Strub Stakes. John Sadler takes another stakes this weekend and Joel Rosario was along for the ride at $3.

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