As the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday approaches, Zenyatta is doing something that few horses have accomplished in my lifetime–Zenyatta is going mainstream. Over the past few days, Zenyatta has been featured in Oprah’s magazine, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and of course on 60 Minutes. I can’t remember the last time a horse received so much attention for positive reasons. On Wednesday, Zenyatta was made the 8-5 morning line favorite to win the Classic. Without belaying my nerdiness too much, one quick rule of thumb to convert betting odds to win probability is to take the first number (8) and divide it by the two numbers added together (8+5). At 8-5 odds, Zenyatta has a 60% implied chance to beat the 11 other horses in the Classic and finish her career with a perfect 20 wins–one shy of blackjack. In eventing, we say that mares are the hardest horses on earth to figure out, but once you get them to work with you they are unstoppable. Zenyatta, Eventing Nation will be rooting for you on Saturday.
Now, onto some eventing notes…
–Katie’s post on Wednesday about the potential hypocrisy of criticizing Oliver for running Carousel Quest at so many four-stars has led to a comment war about Allison taking Arthur to Galway. On one hand, having been through my fair share of setbacks due to injury, I can sympathize with the viewpoint that you should make the most of the time when upper level horses are sound. On the other hand, I feel like Arthur is much too nice of a horse to be worrying about three-stars. Of the 18 members of the US WEG short list, Arthur is the only horse to be doing a CCI3* this fall. The others either went to the WEGs, Pau, or are taking it easy this fall and looking ahead to a spring CCI4*. Arthur is maybe one of the top 6 horses in the US and I don’t think he has anything to prove at a three-star. More importantly, we need an official name for comment wars on EN. Any suggestions?
–In news from Pau, Remington passed the first vet inspection on Wednesday afternoon. With a Pau field of just 38 horses, the expectations are high for Boyd and Remi. In my mind, Remi was very comparable to Neville at the time of WEG selection and I think a top 10 is expected from him at Pau. One thing to remember about Pau is that it is the final event in the $150,000 HSBC Classic series. WFP is leading the series and has one horse at Pau, as does Andreas Dibowski who trails William in the standings by just 5 points. Three 2010 four star winners are in the field: William, Paul Tapner, and Sharon Hunt. Like Galway, the dressage starts on Friday. Link: Pau ride times
–The Galway jog is later today and with it begins a CCI3* and one big step forward for California eventing.
–We didn’t get around to a Wednesday live blog this week. Any strong feelings of joy or sorrow? If enough readers are angrier than Pat Parelli at Catwalk then we might have one next Wednesday.
–As we start to see the light at the end of the tunnel for the 2010 competition season, I am already looking ahead to the brief winter break. Two things that I am very excited to be introducing soon are several new EN sponsors and the mythical EN hats and t-shirts. The hats are fully designed and I’m just waiting to order them until I know I will have time to mail them out. As a reminder of something that most readers already know–if you need something from the barn please buy it through the banners on EN such as the SmartPak banner. It’s guaranteed to give you EN karma and, since companies keep track of where their sales come from, it will help keep the heat on at the EN corporate headquarters through the long cold winter.
–Are you excited about the FEI presidential elections on Friday? If so, that makes one of us.
This might not make any sense, but it makes more sense than lots of other videos we have posted so suck it:
That’s all I have for now, but keep checking back throughout the day for much more ridiculousness and maybe some eventing news if we get bored with the ridiculousness. But I’m only promising ridiculousness. See you soon.
