ESPN Horse Racing

Updated: November 6, 2009, 9:19 PM ET

Can't quite win them all

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By Jay Cronley
Special to ESPN.com
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Having just published three winners for this fine, upstanding site, including the last big one for the Classic, and including a collection on the Tapitsfly and Rose Catherine combo, I take back everything I have ever said about that beautiful and wonderfully fair fake dirt, and California racing, five-horse fields and all.

Unfortunately, I seem to do this every year, I rake it in opening Cup day, and then shovel some back when the males take over. Still and all, being a part time genius beats being a deadbeat loser.

Here is what we learned, and had reconfirmed, on female day, Friday, at the Breeders' Cup.

Horse racing sure is a lot of fun when everybody gets around upright and comes back safely.

There is no such thing as fall in LA.

There are few skirts that extend below the knee.

It doesn't hurt the horse when a gate worker takes it by the ears and moves it toward a starting position.

Trevor Denman continues to call a mean race, hitting the early photo finish right on the nose first time through.

Horse race announcers and analysts on TV are far and away the most literate and entertaining of all the other sports combined.

Don't fiddle with Europeans on the turf.

Speed at any distance on fake dirt turns the home stretch into something resembling quicksand -- mid-pack is Position A, a reasonable last against nutty fractions is fine.

Each time "value" was mentioned on television, the horse was a big, fat loser, reaffirming my contention that all winners have value. Go looking for value, you wind up with lemons.

You don't want to hang out with anybody who says nothing before a race and then comes up afterward and says, of a big payoff, "I had it."

Write to Jay at jaycronley@yahoo.com.