My weekend started with the Fri-Sat Breeders' Cup races and I didn't want them to end.
It wasn't that I was winning a lot of money, because I wasn't. Just cashed modestly, save for a thrilling win by Shamrock Rose at 25-1. But it's so fun, sitting on the sofa for hours, eating snacks, watching magnificent horses race. There was four hours on Friday afternoon, and six hours on Saturday. For betting, there's nothing like the Breeders' Cup, because I'm a longshot player, and with most races having full fields of fourteen, really good horses can go off at high odds.
I don't study the races, however. I used to enjoy deciphering the puzzle of how a race was going to be run, given the entrants and the specific conditions of the race. Now, I don't have the patience for it. Plus, I concluded a long time ago that being educated about how a race is likely to unfold has little to do with how it unfolds. I don't win any fewer races now when I used to spend a lot of time studying the Racing Form. I already accept that dozens of factors can affect what is "supposed" to happen, so to me it's not about picking a winner; but instead, just happening to have the winning number on a longshot when things go its way. I do look at the Racing Form, but primarily to eliminate horses that haven't shown any "can do" in recent races, and from the remainder, it's a matter of if I can get 6-1 odds or higher. And then if there's still too many horses to play, then I start finding inane reasons to like ones more than others -- including that I've won money on them before, or the horse is sired by a stallion that I really like, etc. In a field of fourteen, I won't play any more than four horses. Less, if the field is ten or fewer.
With the horse racing plotlines in the "Adventure" series, I'm often weighing my real life knowledge against what makes for more streamlined story-telling. The argument for the latter is that readers won't know the inaccuracies anyway. The argument for the former is that I know the difference. Yet, even my own knowledge is a challenge sometimes, because it's hard to go back thirty years and verify facts from the late 1980s. So much has changed in the sport. For example, at that time Hollywood Park, which is the track Starsky and Hutch live closest to, and which hosted the inaugural Breeders' Cup in 1984, was a major fixture on the Southern California circuit. Five or so years ago, it was sold to real estate investors and torn down. So, the region's circuit has completely changed, in terms of when racing is held at Santa Anita and when it's held at Del Mar.
For that matter, I'm debating about whether to mention that the Breeders' Cup exists. If so, the race that Bri would be pointed toward is one that exists now -- when there's fourteen races over two days -- but didn't exist back in the 80s or 90s, when the BC series started out with just seven races on one afternoon. Oh, and one would have had to nominate a horse as a foal to be eligible, or else pay a whopping $200,000 supplement fee at the time of entry. Would Starsky and Hutch have nominated any of Darla's foals for the Breeders' Cup? I can't imagine that they would have thought about it. I certainly hadn't at the time Darla's two foals were born. I suppose it'll come down to whether I want to bother mentioning the nomination thing to make a plotline out of it. In modern times, most Thoroughbreds born with halfway decent parents are automatically nominated, so it is rarely an issue, like it was in the first few years that the BC was in existence.
In any case, the next "Adventure" story has started. I don't have much of a path yet, in terms of how it will unfold, though it does have the potential to have a different tone than most of the stories, in the way that "Root Canal" (where Starsky was robbed) was different. But if so, this story would have a much lighter tone. If I keep to that, it probably won't be very lengthy.
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