Auction Thoughts

Keeneland has very decent last three days of the catalog particularly 3rd to last and second to last day.  I worry more about buying cheap at Keeneland from past viewings that show, unlike Fasig Tipton Oct., that many  horses there are culls instead of legit sells. My experience at auction and thus significant worry is to get a horse with a wind problem.  Estimate about 1/3 of my auction purchases have had wind problems making them useless horses.  When ur buy is  "all or nothing' in the budget wind problems are the #1 concern.  They do put such horses in the sales.  Kenneth McPeek sold me one once.  I asked his seemingly nice father about the nice Danzig Connection horse I bought for $12,000 in 1998 if the horse had any faults. "No".  McPeeks are forever on my list.  That was also the horse that wound up kicking me in the throat, through my fault instead of the horse's. I leaned down with the bill of my cap blocking my view.  A hard, expensive lesson.

We have the cash to buy.  And so, what now except to wait and educate urself. I tend to try to leave no stone unturned.  However, note to myself, unlike with Rollin' Rodney where I suckered for an unraced mare because she was out of a then (2007) untouted broodmare sire name Arch, at auction stick to the mares with a race record.  I was prescient of course about Arch.  When u study breeding u recognize the overlooked one's and Arch was obviously spectacular.  Nevertheless, I wound up with Rodney and his peculiar wind problem.  Never seen anything like it.  The horse getting into his gallops could never get any air at all for the first 10 strides.  Made him difficult and overly jumpy, and more than anything else caused him to be unraced.

I have considered instead of auction calling the farms. I fear we'd pay too much that way, but it is a thought. Buying a horse off a farm u could trot the little fellow for wind problems before buying.  Might be worth a couple of thousand more.  

Training Facilities

First money credited to the bank account today. Blogger and co. in "purchase" mode.  There's such a small window of opportunity with these youngsters were time really does fly away at lightening speed.  I still recall my super animal Acesmash, accidental son of my Broadbrush stallion who was such a nice horse as a two and three year old and I fiddled and fiddled and never got serious till age 4 at which time he'd grown too big and fat.  Missed it completely with a potential major league animal.

This was my intent with my last two bought in 2006 and 2007.  Break 'em, do the requisite galloping at the farm and get 'em to the track early age two.  As it turned out the KC for the next 5 years almost immediately from the date of purchase started with constant record rainfall   We never did get 'em there.

So, another chance now and same idea.  By coincidence my retirees are pastured on the above lovely cut hay field.  70 acres of this stuff.  Left click and see that it's a trainers dream come true.  Numerous perfectly sloping hills, straight aways, absolutely flat ground with the grass absolutely the right height.  Everything necessary can be done with a horse here should the weather hold, and so area in which we may gallop the youngster is one of the reasons for my enthusiasm.  

My first thought was--heck I can keep the horse here till June or July, do all the breeze work and be racing quite soon after we hit a race track middle of age two. Failed to reckon this grass is going to start growing in early April, and after that we'll shortly be out of business in that field.

Good enough though.  If I can figure out the logistics of getting to the place, which is about 17 miles away, and the field itself is buried back in the woods and a daily pain to get to--and when u get there still necessary to find the horses somewhere on the 70 acres, drive 'em to the saddling area etc.

Getting ahead of myself, except to think that the major obstacle for anyone buying a new horse is the place to train, and so nice before hand this field is there.

Wed. Misc.

The hope  here will be to deal with subject of performance with a live horse.  Getting one is the next order of business and now that the money is here am considering a sales strategy.  The budget will be $0-$5000 range, and too bad the money got here too late for the recent OK sale which had nicely bred stock in the price range.  Back to the business of considering pedigree, conformation and such.  Keeneland straight ahead.

2 Mile Gallop--One More Thing

Getting rid of two miles gallops are theoretical for the blogger.  We're without horses to train for the moment.  Would we actually never two mile gallop with a real horse is still a bit of a Q.  Given my own analysis I will certainly quit worrying about incorporating any two mile galloping and get on to other types of exercise schematics that presumably might be the subject here if the blog can continue with an actual horse.

Wanted to clarify this post that getting rid of 2 mile galloping in 2:30 to 2:05 range is other than never exercising the horse for a two mile distance.  E.g. on breeze days the horse may do:  appropriate warm up + breeze + gallop out and easily travel more than two miles depending on the distances.  The horse certainly needs to be--in whatever manner--conditioned to doing the total volume of work it will do on its fast days.

The Case For Eliminating the Two Mile Gallop

Exercise equipment of choice at the moment for the blogger above.

Ideally in the race I want my horse to do :11s down the final straightaway after maintaining a straight :12s steady state type gallop the remainder of the race.  I want my horse fit enough to do :12s for the race distance and have enough left physiologically to accelerate out of that in the stretch.

This is world record stuff, and so realistically maybe we're talking :12.2s or :12.3s as the steady state gallop followed by 1.5f of :11.8s down the stretch. You see the point.  We want the pre-stretch drive gallop to be "steady state" galloping that the horse is able to maintain without too much lactic acid build up or O2 debt accumulating so something in terms of aerobic/anaerobic energy expenditure is left for the stretch run.

Now the point here is that this type of conditioning is going to be accomplished by other than 2 mile gallops done at 2:05 or 2:10/mile rate.  My guess is that this sort of conditioning will require both constant training of the horse galloping along in :12s as well as short bursts in :11s.  Th horse needs to be able to maintain the :12s and do the :11s.

And, again, my opinion is that we can do unlimited slower 2 mile gallops and we'll never get there with the horse.

Put another way, assuming we get some unknown quantity of aerobic fitness with our horse in a program of 2 mile galloping in 2:05s or 2:10/mile, how many of those do we need do per month to really get the benefit?  I think you'd have to feature them.  10-15 such gallops per month. Put another way--doing 5 of these gallops per month in between the other work is going to accomplish nothing.

I.e. we have a choice--do we feature the 2 mile gallop, OR do we feature speed work.?  Why choice? Because there are insufficient number of days in the month to do both--and, I think this was the root of my long dilemma with the 2 mile gallop.  You are unable to do enough of them to make them matter in terms of racing, and, moreover, every two mile gallop the horse does is done in lieu of speed work from which there is so much more to be gained..

Now, if you're Todd Plecher breezing 5f  in 1:02 every 7 days and give the horse two weeks off after a race, then, sure,  by all means, the rest of the week do the 2 mile gallops galore.  I'd say two mile gallops would be excellent if the horse's only speed work is once a week. If our training of choice is more speed work than that, and effective speed work to boot, possibly we drop the 2 mile gallops altogether.   have learned some lessons on that treadmill on this of late, next post.

More On Off Day Galloping

The epiphany re long gallops indeed involves, per Pressey comment, training the horse after racing begins.

 Before the first race most trainers albeit in differing ways do a decent job of first race prep just as 90% of them botch things up after racing begins.  Horse trainers like their human counterparts seem without a clue that fitness must be maintained and hopefully improved after the games begin.  The coaches in the National Football League currently have this dilemma of figuring off day practicing in wake of the limitations on practice time and even content in the recent NFL collective bargaining agreement.

For myself, to illustrate the problems more precisely, most of the 1990s into my Eureka
Downs racing in the year 2003, my entire program was built around lengthy volume galloping in hybrid Tom Ivers style.  More galloping seemed better to me and yet, once the serious breeze/race work began deciding what to do in the 3 off days between the speed work--I was never ever comfortable incorporating two mile slow day work. Never was able to figure out how to logically and smoothly incorporate this into the program.

What does a 2 mile gallop get the horse?  After my horses became "fit", as I mean the term, in any two mile gallop it is hard to restrain the horse to a 2:30/mile speed.  In general horses would tear around there between 2:05 and 2:15/mile speed for two miles, and to watch a horse do this successfully between breezes gives a certain sense of satisfaction that the horse easily does some fairly serious aerobic work.

As above, the value of the 2 mile gallop in this sense is unquestionable, and indeed I believe one--per Neil Drysdale-- can build a whole program around 2 mile gallops and slow 1 mile breeze work in the :13.5-:13 sec./f range.  Can testify from personal experience that this produces a fit animal that on race day can compete for the whole distance.

However, there's a large problem with the above two mile work illustrated by the fact--how many Neil Drysdale horses do you ever hear from again after they win a major stakes.  Hardly ever.  And, its rare to even see Neil Drysdale in a stakes race.  Why?  First, the above program is insufficient for injury prevention. It is a non-speed specific program and you're asking the horse to go much faster on race day.  Second, horse racing is a speed game.  This two mile program is great for aerobic fitness and a strong horse but is woefully inadequate for training a horse to gear up to :11 sec/f when necessary to run down another horse.

Yet, likely, one might conjure up a sustained two mile program with accelerations, combined with frequent racing, that might be truly superb.  This is, however, other than the way I want to go, from long personal experience.  I transitioned from this sort of thing after reading Preston Burch's book and saw first hand how my horse Aylward in the year 2003 progressed so much faster with every 3 day 5f breezing then he ever did with the two mile gallops. 

Yet, in 2003 the need to slow gallop longer was always with me.  It nagged at me.  Galloping a horse a mile on an off day always seemed a woefully inadequate amount of work.

After the epiphany of completely eliminating long gallop work--specifically the two mile gallops--from the program, suddenly the nagging feeling engendered by reading Tom Ivers books has disappeared.  The days of standing there one month after racing has begun sending a horse out for a 2 miler in 2:10 and realizing the horse has actually done only 5 2 mile gallops in the last 4 weeks and thinking--what the heck is to be accomplished by this are over for yours truly.  This sort of work has been eliminated.  Why?  Possibly there are both physiological reasons for this, and also better ways.  Elaborate next post.

Exercise Schematic (Continued)

Preface that in horse prep there are many different ways to skin the cat, if you'll pardon that expression.

Is there an optimal way, a better way?  Likely, and probably already been done by such as Whittingham, T.J. Smith, O'Gorman, Burch, Fiztsimmons, Hirsch and the like.  For the uninitiated, correct, we decline to place modern numbers trainers into these categories. Put numbers trainers another way--new owners that chase win percentages with these types are probably short, instead of long, for the game. Interestingly Tom Ivers could never trainer a horse.

Last posted I noted my epiphany to get rid of all long galloping.  A little background on this. First thing in my new racing career mid '80s was publication of "The Fit Race Horse" by Tom Ivers.  For injury prevention purposes this well written/well argued book developed a program on volume slow galloping.  At the time this made a lot of sense to me, although confide that when my horse was actually doing the six miles for 20 min I got very little satisfaction out of it.  It was the beginning of my questioning of "volume" as a training tool.

The idea of volume did stick with me however. Looking back, I'd say my whole training career involved expanding the program.  That was until I read Preston Burch's book.  By time of my run in with the Burch book I was already starting to come to Burch's conclusions but still with a little Ivers twinge to it.  We do need those 2 mile slow gallops in there somewhere, right???? I've come to the idea that it's otherwise.

And who would make the case for that but Bill Pressey in comment to last post.  Be sure to read that informative comment!  And txs to Bill for taking the trouble to put all that in there.  Heart rate info at the various percentages of effort and what the various efforts as u spin up the speed accomplish physiologically.
Most interesting to me was Pressey's comment that 80-90% effort is what's needed to convert lactic acid to energy.  This coincides--as I think back--to my enthusiasm for :14 sec/f galloping.  Back to that later.

Pressey's comment essentially makes the case for the various speeds in terms of performance. (And, let' do remember that for "injury prevention"--an equal concern--we need at least one 12.5 sec/f 4f work every seven days!)  I believe, and this would be based on the Pressey comments, the case can be strongly made for eliminating the long 2 mile type gallops altogether.  Continue next post.
 ____________
Training notes:  The personal exercise program:  spun up to 8.2 mph speed today in short bursts. Different gear!  Did that for 6 straight miles once upon a time.  I have zero recollection, none, that 8.2 mph is moving this fast as this rate of speed seemed today.    More on my gym program as it applies to horses soon.

Super Careful

Above, aptly named, Super Careful, is "for sale".  The world of OTB.  Super Careful in action:http://horsezone.com.au/category/205/Thoroughbred/listings/14295/Super-Careful-Super-Scopey.html

You know where this is going.  They're trying to get $17,000.00 for the horse.  Well, if u have a $17,000 horse, what do u do with him?  You sell him.  Goes without saying for those of us with normal size pockets.

$17,000 is a chunk of change and by chance the exact amt. of the windfall the blogger is about to receive.
Merriam Webster defines "windfall" as a sudden gain or advantage.  Like hitting the lottery jackpot was an incredible windfall (for the recently laid-off worker).

Windfalls come along on occasion, and if we have a $17,000 horse resulting from such a windfall out on the race track, how do we handle this horse?  Well..........we're Super Careful, in every way.   This blog has been partially about how this is accomplished day to day on the race track.

And so, now I hope to cement another portion of the Super Careful puzzle.  What is our optimal training schematic to prevent injury and get performance? "Preserve and Enhance"--the most enduring phrase from Tom Ivers.

Last post I outlined the problem of off day galloping combined with the short time between breezing.  If we're to go on a 3 day breeze, 4 day breeze or even 5 day breeze schedule we're always either resting a horse right after a breeze or going light the day before the breeze.  Rational injury prevention training and also performance would seem to require such a schedule.

And thus, we have generally only one day were the horse will be doing significant slow galloping work.  In the training cycle that's one day out of 3 or one day out of four or one or two days out of five.  E.g.

6f breeze  Sun
Rest  Mon.
2 mile gallop Tues.
1 mile gallop Wed.
6f breeze (or race) Thurs

repeated over and over.  The problem I referred to last post is that I start to get uncomfortable with those 2 mile gallops, and particularly if they're done at a snappy pace--:16s or :17s with some :15s thrown in, as fit horses are prone to do.

The inexperienced eye will likely figure we're without problems with the two mile gallops in the above scenario.  However, if you're out their leading your horse from the shed row through the gap to the race track for that 2 mile gallop, if you're thinking--you're concerned.  Just did 6f two days ago, last 2 mile gallop was, good grief, 5 days ago.  The horse has only gone two miles once in the last 9 days.  What is the possibility that it might pull something at this distance?

Answer to that last Q is probably "fairly small".  But this is the point!!!!!!!  If u want to preserve that horse here is the % of known risk u take:  0%.  None, nada, zilch. Never ever take a chance with the horse. Put another way--that "fairly small risk" repeated over, let's say, 10 2 mile gallops spaced as above becomes a much larger risk.  At some point somethings gonna happen.

And so, the blogger has struggled with the off day exercise protocol the whole time I was on the race track.  And, let's include without elaborating, there's a performance aspect to this also.  What does the 2 mile gallop really set the horse up for?

This is where my recent epiphany comes in.  Likely--if u really think about it--the 2 mile gallop sets the horse up for "nothing".  Truly, if we consider that racing is a speed game, what really are we getting out of a 2 mile :17 sec/f gallop.  I think my answer is "very little to be gained".  And so, my epiphany has been--you cut out the 2 mile galloping.  You eliminate it from your program.  Doing this--I think suddenly conceptually the pieces of a Tome Ivers or Preston Burch style speed program fit together much more logically.  Elaborate with an actual exercise schematic next post. As to Super Carful, let's sincerely hope he finds a good home.

Optimal Exercise Schematics

This is a technical training post, which I consider highly important.

Recent financial windfall for the blogger in amt. of $17,500 opens up possibility of buying new horse.  And so, would like to get back to Q of performance hopefully when there is a live subject to deal with.

Want to post, however, before temporarily leaving topic, of a problem in exercise schematics that maybe I've solved after all these years.

It never mattered whose program I was doing--Ivers, Preston Burch, T.J. Smith, or my own hybrids, I never figured a rational solution as to what to do on the slow gallop days.  I grew into the Sport off of Tom Ivers, and in retrospect was likely severely set astray.  I received the impression from Ivers that the more slow work the better.  And so, If I breezed 6f in 1:12 to 1:14 ever 4 days there was the Q--what do do in between.  The same Q exists for the every three day breezing in the Preston Burch Program.  Burch wrote--do in those two days what the Trainer deems best.  Well--if the horse is breezing 5f to a mile every three days your temptation is to do nothing in the two off days, but then exercising the horse only every three days hardly seems enough.

U start to get the picture.  In the case of the every 4 days breezing Iver's program, here is the thought process:

6f in 1:12 on Sun.
Mon Off--so far it's easy.
Tues.  Gallop 2.25 miles :17s--horse has been trained to this (to date).  Can be done with some risks--what if horse pulled a little muscle in the breeze?
Wed:  This is the problem day.  Do we do another 2.25 miles. That seems like an awful lot to be doing day before breezing 6f in 1:12s. I personally prefer to do mile at the most in about :18s or :19s day before breeze.
Thurs. 6f in 1:12.

Now--here's the problem.  If we repeat the above about 8 times with the idea of continuing to repeat this cycle even throwing in races on the 6f days, the 2.25 mile gallop starts to be a problem.  Why?  Because:
1. 2.25 miles in :17 is a very healthy fairly strenuous gallop for which the horse needs to be conditioned to that work before doing it or else the injury risk goes up dramatically, and
2.  In one month we've only done 7 or 8 of these 2.25 mile gallop--i.e. our horse is no longer well conditioned to the 2.5 mile gallop.  3 out of ever 4 days he's doing a mile or less, and so the 2.25 mile gallop becomes more and more of an injury risk as we go particularly since we're doing it 2 days after a hard breeze or race.

And, if the 6f day is a race instead--we're likely to postpone the 2.25 mile gallop for a few more days, and we then might have one 2.25 mile gallop/week.

The point--again--of all this--I always had trouble with the slow gallop days.  I finally abandoned the Ivers schematic because I was unable to resolve this problem.  I think I've solved it now.  Next post.

Shearwater Oscar And Company

Day started out peacefully at 7:am feeding horses at the "place" 16 miles from DT.  Get there, and no horses.Turns out the owner had opened u his 70 acre hay field.  There they were peacefully munching on nicest training layout one might conjure. Good grief, absolutely perfect for the soon to be purchased yearling. Angled gently rolling hills over a cut hay field with plenty of 2-3f flat straightaways for speed work. Preston Burch Training Hog Heaven.  Nothing close to this nice at the old place. Photos coming!

And, then office, fiddling through riding helmet adds, some vids.  Q to self:  "I" am getting back into "this"?

Here they are. Shearwater Oscar in action, 2012 Olympic Equine Pentathlon.  Nice work Shearwater! And a less lucky lady and good thing she was wearing her spanking new GPA Helmet.Sometimes u get them. Sometimes they get u.

(Left click for full screen)

New York Sale

"...it goes without saying that hell is more crowded than heaven..."
                      --Jose Saramago from  The Gospel According to Jesus
                                                                                                 Christ

On that rousing note the blogger is back in action after a week of, to be polite, personal non-action spent watching such things as this weekends interesting NY breds sale at Saratoga.  Once again observing horse after horse going through the ring the eye starts to sharpen and instantly recognize what the blogger prefers in his racing animals.

Size matters, although maybe too much.  Legs too short for the body for me tends to disqualify.  Ditto lots of white on the legs--injury waiting to happen.  How many races do we see won by white legged horses? Unraced dams--certainly a risk to have a breathing problem.  Am sworn personally to avoid the unraced, although with the declining foal crop might have to bite.  Will see on that one.

Like in that day when for fun I spent some time on weekends coaching 4th and 5th graders in basketball, you instantly spot the athletes and one or two youngsters inexplicably stood out as athletes--Ring presence, a graceful way of moving, interest in the proceedings.  Somebody study-- horses that come into the ring alert, and with it, compared to the half asleep or intimidated bunch in terms of subsequent racing success.  Is there a correlation between horses that are up and active in the sales ring and the sleepers?  Is there a correlation between the larger youngsters and their more stubby companions.  In this sale I'd say you could quickly spot why the $5000 horses were going for that price while most of them went $30-$50,000.00.  However, really--who knows once a good trainer gets their hands on them?

Then there was that total dud that went for $300,000.00.  Unraced non-producing dam and very little to recommend the horse  on pedigree or appearance.  Just sat there stunned as they kept bidding this horse up.

For myself, am similarly concerned to consider the huge lifestyle change involved in trying to get back to the race track.  All the local infrastructure has been stripped away since my first start in the mid-1980s.  Similarly, the horse support in the entire States of Kansas and Missouri that was once there has evaporated. In terms of horse racing around here one is on one's own these days.  I'd sworn with my next horse that I'd get it to the race track in short order and would have this planned out before the purchase.  With the $17,500 due in next week--and I hope it arrives before the very nice OK sale--figuring out what to do with the horse after purchase seems the immediate problem.

Saratoga Sale

Long time since this blogger was interested in any sale.  Reopens the important horse acquisition Q.  And so, I was glued to the interesting opening session at Saratoga last eve.  Being without any previous experience involving this sale--never watched it before--the first thing that hit me was the amount of $$$ raining down from the sky.  Horse after horse comes in at 2-3 hundred thousand dollars. thought occurs--where do these people get their dough? Somebody paid $310,000 for a cribber, good grief!

I watch the sale with for purpose of educating my eyeballs so that when the $3,000 prospect walks through the ring and nobody bids, I am ready to strike without any Q that I am looking at a good horse. Lot's of good experience here and certainly nothing wrong with the horses.

Some notes I made as it went:

completely irrational bidding--the usual.
425000 for more than ready filly out of unraced monarchos mare without a foal record to date. wtf.
horse handler driving me nuts--just let 'em be.(that was the first one, the black guy.  The second fellow, white dude was quite good.  Let 'em have their heads. Knew how to show a horse.)

watched to Hip 100
Only 4 or 5 horses here that would be other than top stakes class in terms of conformation and appearance.
breeding good horses now.
typical hot housed yearlings in terms of conditioning.
lots of $$$
the usual suspects as owners from the morning line in T Times. Almost nobody new, and really a small number of people.

Mon. Misc.

Blogger with $$$ in pockets loses focus, utterly.  Thought process right now is getting hands on another horse.  We're back in business!!!  Presumably.  Seems a lot harder now than it was when yours truly bought that first two year old in training for $7000.00, Jeckimba Bay, way back when.

In terms of "performance" which had been the subject, hopefully will be blogging fairly soon about real life experience which will be to avoid all my previous errors in being too patient with the young horse and never getting 'em to the race track.  Done that too many times.  Plan this time is to start off from day one with idea of early two year old racing.  Will see.

I do plan to finish my "performance" section in terms of training schematic.  This week hopefully.  Then divert to getting that next horse.  Saratoga sail tonight.  I'll be glued.  Have already perused the Hips for the August Texas, Minnesota and OK sale.  Ok sale is interesting--before realizing it will be late Aug. before $$$ is actually in pocket.  + my experience with those smaller sales, there are generally only a few horses worth buying and the money is all over them whereas at Keenland you stand by hoping one will fall through the cracks.

As to the Whitney, certainly Fort Larned was the obvious horse by the chalk.  I moved off him after watching all the fields prior races.  Fort Larned had a nice Iowa Derby and very nice PPs, but in Iowa he was galloping weakly with his head nodding.  I dislike nodders as winners in Grade I fields.  Shows weak training somewhere. Interestingly Larned showed much improvement in strength of galloping for the Whitney.  Reade Bakers' horse looked like a dynamo in his last Grade III at Woodbine. I'd thought him the most energetic moving up horse in the field after viewing the vids. Never ran a jump.  I'd suspect it's a combo of change of surface and Reade Baker.  I've noticed photos in the past of Baker's horses--inferior husbandry imo tending to cluelessness. Note to self--never again favor a Reade Baker horse.

Sat. Misc.

Does the old heart good to see a $7500 yearling win a Grade II race at Saratoga yest.  There's still hope:

http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/71782/c-cs-pal-surges-to-honorable-miss-triumph

CCs Pal by Alex's Pal by Successful Appeal by Valid Appeal.  There's always been something markedly successful about the Valid Appeal (In Reality) line.  They're fast, and I like that pedigree in my horses.

The blogger will shortly have $17,000+ in the bank account.  Another one of those occasional windfalls of my other profession.  Will we buy a horse in Sept.  Debating on it as I really will be a lot more ready for this next March.  And yet, time flies by.  Maybe time to do it while the $$$ is there.  My main concern that is bugging me would be having to geld this poor little fella almost the minute he get's here.  That's a lot to put a young horse through.  But for that thought I'd likely be gung ho.

Today's Whitney.  I doubt Ron The Greek has done enough in his training.  Is that Dutrow horse carrying only 110 lbs.  They're all, by and large, now breezing once a week.  Even Reade Baker who in the year 2008 by my analysis had one of the worst injury rates and inappropriate work schedules going. Whereas he's likely bringing a very live long shot and my choice (Hunter's Bay) into this race (although change of surface here would be major concern--always a hedge):

http://www.bloodhorse.com/pdf/WhitneyH2012PPs.pdf

Back In Business

Blog interruption as the big case in my office has kept me busy last few days.  Settled, and thus--money in kitty just in time for Sept. sales.  Back in horse racing, possibly.  More later.