In January of 2006, NASA, in conjunction with some bright folks at Johns
Hopkins, launched the New Horizons probe. The objective of New Horizons was to
do a fly by of Pluto, which depending on who you speak to, is or is not the
ninth planet in our solar system. This mission was accomplished in 2015, and
the probe continues to explore the vast expanses of the Universe beyond Pluto.

The probe is about the size of my Buick Encore. It is traveling through space
at a gazillion miles an hour, and it is gatrillions of miles away from Earth,
somehow avoiding space debris and meteors and asteroids, all while being
controlled by a man or woman sitting at a keyboard much like the one I am
sitting at as I type this. Yet we can't solve our problems here on Earth, or
apparently at the racetrack.

Belinda's Bizarro World: Zero tolerance for performance enhancing drugs at SA,
Jorge Navarro and Marcus Vitale plying their trade in Hallandale. Read the
comments at the Paulick Report and Barry Irwin will tell you why this must be
so, why Santa Anita and Golden Gate will be boldly going where no other track
has dared to go, while Laurel and Gulfstream (also owned by Stronachs) will
maintain the performance enhanced status quo.

What I have not heard anyone mention is that Del Mar, or even Turf Paradise, or
Los Alamitos, or all of them, acting alone or in concert, could offer owners
and trainers a permissive medication environment and safe racing surfaces, and
relegate Santa Anita and Golden Gate to "boutique meet" status, or even
extinction. I am thinking that the younger generation of Stronachs could live
with this.

Belinda Stronach makes wonderful pronouncements about continuing the family's
involvement with thoroughbred racing after her father has passed on. These
pronouncements sound somehow familiar, maybe because to my ears they have the
same tone as the pronouncements the Phipps family offered about staying in the
game after the Patriarch, Dinny Phipps, passed in 2016. I am curious and wish I
had the time to study closely to what extent the Phipps family has stayed in
the game. How many horses do they have in training? How many horses have they
quietly sold in small lots? How many mares did they breed this Spring? How much
of this activity was guided by the "dead hand" of the Patriarch through estate
planning? In any case, my opinion is that within 5 years the families Stronach
and Phipps will play a significantly reduced role in the Thoroughbred racing
world; if and when Frank Stronach passes, I could see the Stronach heirs
selling all of their US racetrack holdings, and possibly retaining Woodbine.