Vic Had A Stroke?

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by freddymo

Yep when all the trainers he rode all those winners for move he can rule the fair circuit.. Have you looked at the state of Cal. racing? Have you looked at the fields? I mean seriously Delmar's opening day card is like a kyiosk not a boutique.

No knock on Vic or Joel.. They are swimming upstream.. The horses are moving east with their trainers and owners. You will always be able to find a good live mount in Ca. just not at the race track.

You say that trainers and owners are moving East. I guess that could happen at some point but it hasn't happened yet and I don't see it happening any time soon. The only guy that has moved is Paulo Lobo (not exactly a big-name trainer). If you look at the leading trainers at Hollywood Park (O'Neil, Sadler, Baffert, Mitchell, Hollendorfer, Ellis, Jones, etc.), none of those guys are planning on leaving any time soon. So your assessment that the horses, trainers, and owners are moving east, is not correct.

Racing is certainly not doing great in Southern California, but if you look at their numbers, I don't think the numbers are down any more than anywhere else. I think the handle at Hollywood Park was down 10% or something like that. I don't think that's any worse than anywhere else.

If racing goes downhill so badly in Southern California that the purses drop in half, then I agree with you that guys would start moving away. But we're nowhere near that point yet and I don't think it will happen.

There are actually just as many top trainers shipping into California as shipping out. Pletcher ships to California quite a bit and he even keeps a string here for alot of the year. Guys like Mott, Romans, and Clement are shipping in for big races. Biancone is now here full time, although he's not nearly as big as he used to be.

Anyway, I don't see any imminent demise of California racing.

And with regards to Rosario, now that he is doing better than ever and was just leading rider at HP, I think he would have to be out of his mind to leave.