The Draw

Usually I will only put a new post up after a race, but going into the $88,000 Exit 16W final this Saturday, I thought a little story about a mid week happening might be fun. It is the draw. For a race on Saturday, you have to enter your horse by calling the track race office on a designated day. Entries for Saturday were due today by 9am. John Butenschoen always calls our entries in, so we just wait for them to be posted. In today’s world, the easiest way to see the final entries is on the internet. In the olden days, you’d have to call the race office. If they didn’t answer, some people would just let it ring…but that’s another story for another day. It can be kind of nerve-racking because a bad post can spell doom, or at least a much tougher race. You want to avoid outside posts. It is all luck of the draw. Here is some insight as to what it is like to find out in a rather big race (at least it is for us) where we very well might be the favorite to win:

It started rather tame at about 11am on Wednesday morning. In past weeks, draws became available around 11am in the morning. It isn’t always at that time, but usually pretty close. So I logged onto ustrotting.com. Nothing up yet. Then checked thebigm.com (the Meadowlands site). Nothing there either. O, well, it will probably be a few more minutes. Back to work for awhile. Send some emails to Danny about various horse related topics. Ten minutes or so pass. Head back to ustrotting.com. Nothing. Back to thebigm.com. Not yet. Back to work for a little bit shorter time than last time. A quicker email to Danny…and so on and so on. About 40 minutes later, I had ustrotting.com constantly on my web browser and was just hitting refresh over and over again. No work was getting done, but I had to make a phone call. Pick up the phone, hit refresh, dial one number, hit refresh, dial a second number, refresh, phone starts beeping because I’m taking too long to dial, refresh, slam down the phone and begin pounding on my mouse button…WHAT THE HELL IS TAKING THEM SO LONG TO PUT THE DAMN DRAW UP ON THE WEBSITE!!! It was like Harry in Dumb and Dumber when he was trying to get that lady’s number at the gas station after he lit his leg on fire. She looks for a pen. Can’t find one. He tries to be calm, “you can just tell it to me…I have a really good memory”, she starts with the “Ok…its 555, wait, that’s my old number…” and Harry finally snaps “FOR GOD SAKES JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN NUMBER!” I was Harry. Eventually you have to get to the point where you give up and stick your flaming leg in the bathroom toilet, saving Lloyd from unwanted intimate time with Cam Neely. For me, the bathroom was instead lunch with Laura….a much better option. (And if you haven’t seen Dumber and Dumber 100+ times like I have, that last reference will make no sense. If you have, you will laugh. Sorry to those who haven’t seen it.)

Normally when something like this happens, I can count on Danny to sit patiently at his computer and text me when the draw comes out. Unfortunately, Danny had to waste his time going to class. Midway through lunch, I was very proud at how calm I was. Laura and I were having a nice conversation about how tasty the offerings from Panera Bread were and SHE asked about the draw. I said it hadn’t come out yet to which she replied, “Why don’t you check it on your phone?” I’ll take that opening. I pull it up on the phone and wouldn’t you know it…ustrotting.com finally had the entries up. We got to a point where I was one IPhone screen touch away from finding out what post position Mo would be racing from on Saturday night. Deep breath. Touch the screen. Wait a good 30 seconds (I thought 3G was suppose to be fast???) and finally the page pops up. From this point, though, I could only see the top of the page and no post positions were revealed. I had to scroll down. Another deep breath. Laura figures that since this is taking so long he has to be at the bottom of the page in position nine or ten. Much like someone would take a band aide off a hairy part of their body, I made one big aggressive scroll to reveal the entire field at once…and…AND…post position #6! Whew. What a relief. We would have a fair shake at this thing and not get stuck outside.

I immediately texted Danny and then called Greg. The old heart rate was still pretty high, which apparently also causes my ‘inside voice’ to become an ‘outside voice’. Laura politely gestured that maybe I should continue the conversation in the car because people were wondering who the idiot was talking on his cell phone about ‘six holes’, ‘Woodstock Hanover’, ‘inside posts’ and ‘Pacinello’, but we got through it.

So there you have it. A story of post position draws. If you go waaaay back in the blog, last year I got to write about In Over My Head’s draws in the Junior Trendsetter legs and final. They were: 10, 9, 10. This was after he drew post 10 in a tune up race before the first leg. I guess you could say we were due. So far this year we have: 2, 1, 6. Not too shabby. The draws always seem to find a way to even out over time, but in a vacuum, it can sometimes feel like every draw is bad. We’ve been lucky so far this year and with post position 6, we will have a fair shake at this thing on Saturday. We will see what Sears wants to do with him from there. I can’t wait to watch.