I will address your points briefly from the bottom, sir, trying not to dislodge your rose colored glasses or cause you to spill anything from your half full glass of your selected beverage.

[b]Tiger and The Preakness.[/b]Considering the fact that the Tiger/PGA is now accessible action wise to a much larger audience, I imagine there will be a lot of eyes focused on Bethpage Black next Saturday. But since it is the THIRD round, and it is even possible that Tiger will bounce off his Masters win, I’m sure many will remote from 2 to 4 on their dials to catch the Preakness. Maybe the folks at William Hill NJ will offer a Preakness/PGA double?

There will not be a Triple Crown and I’m personally hoping that this year’s Belmont Day attendance will be in the comfy 30-40k range, even though NYRA has apparently somehow brought one of my favorite racehorses, Fio Rito, back from the grave to make an on-track appearance.

[b]Turning Crown Jewels into Rubles[/b] Is that a rather backhanded swipe at my Russian pedigree and connections? Sheesh, things are tough enough now, living as I am amongst people who sincerely believe that the US government (or one of its noms de course) would NEVER attempt to influence the outcome of an election in a foreign nation. Never.

[b]Baltimore as a corrupt city[/b] I would argue that Baltimore is not a corrupt city. They elected a corrupt self dealing mayor who resigned under pressure last week. In New York City we elected a man who is lazy, corrupt and incompetent and he is ...running for President? New York City is a corrupt city.

[b]Abatement of (23) SA breakdowns[/b] There have been no breakdowns recently as far as I know. But to say that the fatalities have abated has a bad acoustic (that’s an “optic” for your ears, right?) Those 23 fatalities will have a lasting effect and have for better or worse inspired much dialogue. Those 23 fatalities might result in Racing trying to get away from Lasix too hastily (and without industry wide planning)and the results could be unfortunate.

[b]Traditionalists/Breeders Cup[/b] I worked on the backstretch in the early and mid 1980s, and seem to remember everyone being fairly positive about what was then a one day seven race event. As to the “BIG” days that is all I really bet anymore, but if I was a more frequent traveler I would be upset that graded stake racing has almost disappeared from NYRA Sunday cards.

[b]Your Travers, Haskell, Preakness question[/b] My quick answer, with no time for research (Mother’s Day, have to cook for the girls), is that a victory in any of those races, standing alone, doth not a legit stallion make, so my opinion would be they are relatively equally weighted among breeders.

One more comment about Varenka, by Ghostzapper. Wondering why we do not see more sons and daughters of GZ, who turned in some great performances at Belmont. Just seems GZ is somehow underrepresented. Some investigating may be in order.