Mark Cramer
C & X Report

P.S. on Stakes Weekend
We do our best to handicap as if everything were normal. But it's not. Consider Offlee Wild, and how radically he improved when passing into the Dutrow barn. Then came the Dutrow suspension, and we began to wonder about the performances of his horses. I cannot back a horse because their might be some hankypanky in its favor, but this causes me to enter a race with caution when betting against one of the stables of the suspect supertrainers.
I leave you with this copy of a Letter to the Editor to the DRF, regarding another horse from the Dutrow barn.
mc

Letters to the editor
By DRF READERS Too little known of work habits in Queen's Plate
E.P. Taylor must be rolling over in his grave.
The 146th running of the Queen's Plate, Canada's historic race, was won last Sunday by Wild Desert, a shipper from Monmouth Park who had not raced since the Arkansas Derby 10 weeks previous. During that time, the colt had only two reported works, a five-furlong breeze, and a three-furlong breeze. An assistant to Wild Desert's suspended trainer, Richard Dutrow Jr., informed Daily Racing Form, however, that the colt had been working every five or six days, usually "very early" in the day at Monmouth Park ("Off 10 weeks, with scant works, Wild Desert looks the wild card," June 26). The same article reported that Monmouth, unlike some other major racing jurisdictions, does not require horses to be identified before training.
With that as background, it was indeed a pleasure to read that one Daniel Borislow, Wild Desert's principal owner, bragged of cashing out for more than $100,000 in wagers ("An altogether odd Queen's Plate," June 29). The inside money had bet the horse down to 3-1.
One can assume that characters of the ilk of Dutrow and Borislow will always take every possible advantage. Lovers of racing, however, can question the indifference, and even negligence, of Monmouth management and the racing commission in New Jersey. Why in the world would they allow an unidentified horse access to the track for training?
Dave Perkins of the Toronto Star, in commenting on this disgraceful episode, noted that "racing insists on remaining a second-class sport without standardized rules." What a shame.
Kenneth WienerToronto, Ontario