Have you noticed that traffic is worse than ever? It took almost 1 1/4 hours to get to Belmont Park from Purchase, NY. Yes, it was a Friday night. On Sunday night, it took over 1 1/2 hours to get from Stamford, CT to East 75th Street and 1st Avenue in NYC. The same roads that were supposed to be able to handle traffic 50 years ago are still trying to handle traffic created by the millions of more cars sold since then. It doesn’t seem to be working too well. Talk about adding to pollution, global warming, respiratory problems, etc.

In any event, we made it in time. We had a new jockey, Rosario Montanez. Assaf gave his instructions to Rosario and we went off to watch the horses warm up before they got led into the starting gate. Delta Outlaw was in post position #1. We thought he’d go to the front and run with the leaders. For a few moments that seemed to be happening but when the horse in the #2 post came in a little, it intimidated the horse and/or the jockey, because they failed to run with the leaders and fell back to 4th.

It was clear that Delta didn’t like the dirt in his face, being kicked up by the leaders. So, he fell a little further back. When they reached the turn into the stretch, it appeared Rosario had a gap between the leader and the rail. However, rather than saving ground by going for that hole, Rosario took Delta out several paths and tried to get past horses, He passed the tiring ones but could not catch the top two.

We’d been ready for a win. The horse was dropped several levels from a $35K claiming race to a $14K claiming race. The purse was less and the quality of competition was less. But, it was not to be. He bled a little and reinforced the reason for dropping him down.

Next up is Hay Field, who was second by a nose hair in her last race. She runs at 6 1/2 furlongs against similar competition to her last race in the 9th race at Belmont on Thursday.

We were happy that Rajiv was aboard her last time. He did a good job and just missed. However, apparently Assaf and Rajiv had a falling out in another race and Assaf replaced him with Rosario. So, even though Assaf would have used him again (according to Assaf), Rajiv took a call on another horse in this race. So, we have a new jock for Hay Field. His name is Paco Lopez. Paco is very good, though he’s been having a tough time at this meet. Bring Hay Field home, Paco!

FlatteryWillGetYou has been fighting a bug since the end of last week. Seems to be going in the right direction. Only 10 days ago, we were feeding her carrots and cookies.