Venue for January 12

[JolyB]

My friends, I thought that I should explain the reasons why I selected this Saturday's venue. First of all, I couldn't find any races that had Derby prep points. I know that will begin in earnest very soon, and may influence where we play, but not this Saturday. Next, I didn't want to play Santa Anita three weeks in a row. I ruled out Gulfstream because I suspect that we will be visiting there quite a bit in the upcoming weeks. I eliminated tracks in the Northern part of the country to reduce the chances of adverse weather (I happened to look in at the race feed from Mahoning Valley earlier this afternoon and saw very heavy snow falling). Having ruled out a large number of possible choices, I decided to choose a track that we haven't visited just for variety, and hopefully for the fun of it. If my idea of a good time differs from yours, well, I'm sorry.

Having said all of that, we are going to Turf Paradise in Phoenix, Arizona. On Saturday they will have an 8 race card with first post at 12:40 PM Mountain time (1:40 Central and 2:40 Eastern). The races run the gamut from the $75,000 Cotton Fitzsimmons Mile on the turf , the $30,000 Glendale Handicap at 1 1/16 miles on the turf, to a couple of bottom of the barrel $3,000 claiming races. Here's a link to the track website:

http://www.turfparadise.com/

The entries have already been posted at Equibase.

Hope everyone takes this in the spirit it is offered and that all have a fun time.