For The Record

[justindew]

Hello everyone. My name is Justin Dew. Many of you have commented on a issue regarding Hard Spun and a blog entry that I posted on KentuckyDerby.com during Derby Week. I wanted to clear up a few things for those of you who are interested.

First I would like to thank Steve Byk for having me on the show. I enjoyed doing it. For those of you who have not met Steve, he is a first class guy and a lot fo fun to talk to.

I would like to say that I regret my decision to blog about a conversation that took place between myself and a private clocker. An official Churchill Downs website was/is not the place for that kind of "reporting". It was a mistake to write about that conversation, and I will make sure it does not happen again.

I don't mind being called names like "douchebag" and 'idiot" and "moron". I have been called a lot worse in my life, and I can take it. However, I would like to correct a few things that are being incorrectly stated in this forum.

1) At no time did I attempt to pass off the clocker's opinion as my own. I made it very clear in my blog entry that a clocker had told me that Hard Spun was "sore and stiff, and has not been training very well." This information had a profound influence on my wagering strategy, and that is why I wrote about it. At the time I wrote the blog entry in question, I had not even seen Hard Spun, nor had I claimed to have seen him.

2) Both I and the clocker in question knew exactly where Hard Spun was stabled. In my email box, I received a list twice a day that told me where every Derby contender was stabled. It was widely known that Hard Spun was at Keeneland. The clocker in question had seen his workout at Churchill Downs in mid-April, and had seen him train in the mornings at Keeneland. I will admit that the way I wrote the blog entry made it sound that Hard Spun was currently stabled at Churchill Downs. That was also my fault, and the result of poor wording by me. However, Hard Spun's location was not really the point of the blog entry. The point was that a private clocker had told me that the horse was sore.

3) Even though Curlin had not worked on the day that I wrote about him, he was on the track. In fact, I saw Curlin just about every day. I wrote about my opinion on the way he looked on the track. Those words were based on my observation.

4) The blog entry regarding Hard Spun was taken down because Churchill Downs correctly decided that the official Kentucky Derby website was not the place for that kind of "reporting". I agree with that decision 100%.

5) The comments that are/were left in response to my blog entries on KentuckyDerby.com are not screened. In fact, if one was to go back and read all of the comments left on my blog entries, he would see several that are critical of me and my observations. I will say that during Derby Week, the website received a lot of traffic, and many people wrote me to say they were having trouble leaving comments. But neither I nor anyone else was screening anything.

That's about all I have to say. I am very sorry that my blog entry caused such an uproar. That was really the last thing I wanted to do. If anyone wants to email me personally, my address is justindew76@yahoo.com .

Thanks.