Posts Tagged ‘Brad Cummings’

PRESS RELEASE

Sid Fernando, president of eMatings LLC, and Jack Werk, president of Werk Thoroughbred Consultants, Inc., the owner of eNicks, announced jointly Thursday that Mr. Fernando has acquired a stake in WTC, Inc., a privately held corporation controlled by Mr. Werk, and will assume an active role in management immediately.

WTC, incorporated by Jack Werk in 1988, is a leading pedigree consulting firm that pioneered the original commercial sire-line nick rating service that has been notably copied in recent years. Its Werk Nick Rating, however, remains the industry standard and is the most widely used nick rating service in the country. At present, more than 707 stallions are registered with eNicks—significantly more than the number of horses on any other commercial nick rating service. Click here for more information about WTC.

eMatings is a novel internet pedigree consulting service founded by Sid Fernando in 2009 that allows users to obtain pedigree analysis from a wide array of well-known pedigree experts for discounted fees. A former bloodstock editor and columnist at Daily Racing Form, Fernando is an internationally known pedigree writer and racing authority whose articles have appeared in leading thoroughbred racing and breeding publications around the world, including Owner-Breeder, Racing Post, The Thoroughbred Times, Thoroughbred Daily News, Turf Diario, and Pacemaker. His blog, Sid Fernando + Observations, is one of the most internationally read in the business, and he also is a private consultant to a select group of international breeders. Away from the business, he’s a well-known New York youth travel baseball coach and scout. Click here to read a recent article about eMatings by Brad Cummings of the Paulick Report. Click here for more information about eMatings.

“Sid will continue to run eMatings as he always has,” said Werk, “but this will now give him an interest and role in WTC. I’ve been trying to get Sid to buy into WTC for years because of his international knowledge and contacts, and I’m thrilled that he’s acquiring a significant stake in the company because he can expand it internationally right away. He’s one of the sharpest pedigree guys in the business, and I’ve used him as a consultant over the last 10 years for my clients, to great success. Sid’s integrity, knowledge—he was bloodstock editor of Daily Racing Form in the 1990s—and contacts will become huge assets to WTC, and I feel he’s the person I’d like to eventually step in and run the company.”

“Jack and I have been friends since the late 1980s, and our mutual friend—the late Leon Rasmussen, the longtime DRF Bloodlines columnist—was instrumental in the early development of our relationship as writer and editor during the days when Jack published and edited the seminal Owner-Breeder magazine, for which I also wrote,” said Fernando. “Jack’s older than I am—and wiser—and he was actually responsible for my leaving DRF years ago to spend time raising my two sons. ‘You only get one chance,’ Jack said, and I’m glad I listened. It’s worked out that as I was ready to re-enter the business again full time a few years back, Jack was there. His company has been responsible for the infrastructure of eMatings—admin, billing etc.—so acquiring a stake in WTC, Inc., is really a natural progression of an existing relationship. I am looking forward to helping grow the company that he—along with others such as Roger Lyons and a loyal staff—has developed, while also continuing to develop eMatings, which has made quality pedigree analysis affordable and quickly available to breeders at all levels.”

It’s that time of year again. Turf writers, handicappers and bloggers get an extra early start on predicting who will be in the final field of 20 on that first Saturday in May. Is it premature? No doubt. Is the field set in any way? Not on your life. But part of the fun of any sport is to attempt to look into a crystal ball and predict the future.

Which brings us to the second annual Paulick Derby Index this year brought to you by the Simon family’s Vinery LTD. We would very much like to thank our sponsor for making this possible. Additionally, the impressive band of PDI voters, some old faces and some new, are what really make this AP Poll for the Derby Trail work. A special thank you from the Paulick Report to all 25 voters that are not currently on our staff!

Next week, look forward to a more in-depth analysis by Ray Paulick of his top ten and the opportunity for fans to vote on their favorites, thus adding a 28th vote to next week’s poll. We’ll be offering that opportunity Sunday night after the weekend’s races have been run in our daily poll located at www.paulickreport.com.

The list of contenders is wide open this week and should remain so for some time. Are you inclined to go with the early favorite in Lookin at Lucky or hoping for a repeat of last year and searching for the next Mine That Bird? Where did our poll go right? How would you have voted differently? Read through the poll and then let us know where you stand.

By Ray Paulick
The news just doesn’t get any better at the publication where I spent 15 years of my professional life, but the fact that Blood-Horse magazine has laid off at least five more employees today is just as much a sign of the collateral damage from the Kentucky Thoroughbred industry’s economic troubles as it is a statement on the present and future of newspapers and magazines.

Tick off five more losses from the estimated 100,000 jobs the horse industry contributes directly or indirectly to Kentucky’s economy. I have lost count of how many of my friends and former colleagues at Blood-Horse have lost their jobs in the last 18 months. As my Paulick Report partner, Brad Cummings, and I have traveled from business to business in Kentucky, we’re hearing the same refrain, whether it’s at farms, racetracks, suppliers, tack shops, insurance or advertising agencies: this industry is hurting, and it’s painful to see the continuing losses and the damage it inflicts on the individuals and their families.

Each job loss within Kentucky’s signature industry should send a dire message to Frankfort, but I’m afraid our state legislators are tone deaf. With the news that VLT or slots legislation is almost certainly a non-starter again in 2010, it means that Kentucky’s horse industry faces another year of operating on a playing field that is far from level with a majority of states. Racehorses, mares and stallions are leaving the state, and so are the jobs they contribute.

You’ve read it here and many other places that print publications are in trouble, and there’s no doubt the razor thin issues the Blood-Horse has been printing lately reflect a significant shift in advertising dollars from print to online publications. Advertisers are adjusting out of necessity since their revenues are down, and they have to maximize every dollar they spend. Make no mistake: I’m grateful to be on the right side of the technology curve, but it doesn’t make it easier to see what’s happening to so many former colleagues.

Copyright © 2010, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick
I guess this is what you call serendipity. Only a few minutes after I scraped a couple of high school kids off the hardwood of the YMCA basketball court in Lexington (okay, so maybe they were sixth graders), I received the following email from Elisabeth Jensen at the Race for Education, the organization that has done so much to help fund college educations for the sons and daughters of people who work in the horse industry:

“This year 16 teams will play for the trophy and prestigious title of Horse Farm Basketball Champions.  The 2010 tournament will be held Jan. 20-25 at WinStar Farm and benefit the Race For Education and Blue Grass Farm Charity.  Entry fee is $250 per team.  Spectator admission is free. Last year’s tournament raised approximately $10,000 for scholarships for Dara and Chase Mullins.

“To enter a team or for more information call 859-252-8648.”

I checked with Elisabeth to see if the media could enter a team, and she said “bring it on!”

Brad Cummings, associate publisher here at the Paulick Report, may be a little wet behind the ears, but I hear the boy can play a little ball, and I know I can pull from my long-ago high school experience as the 13th man on the Hononegah High School junior varsity team in Rockton, Ill., where I mostly learned to hold a clipboard (pictured, left, wearing No. 11).

So the Paulick Report is in, but we need some help, since five on two would make this a bit of a challenge, especially against those teams that include recently hired “interns” who all happen to be young, tall and fast (would Darley really do that?).

Therefore, I hereby am throwing down the gauntlet to recruit players from all the other Thoroughbred media here in Central Kentucky to team up for a very good cause. I would think that between Blood-Horse Publications, Thoroughbred Times (we’ll even let them include staff from some of their sister publications like Hobby Farms, Reptiles USA and Bird Talk), Daily Racing Form, Indian Charlie (maybe that Ed Musselman fella can rebound), we should be able to field a team that can put a few points on the scoreboard—or at least make it up and down the court without passing out. We compete against each other all year. Let’s all play on the same team for a change.

You know who you are and you know how to reach me. Game on. Let’s have some fun and help a good cause.

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick
Eighteen months ago I was looking for an outlet. Not one of the electrical variety, but a place where I could plug in and distribute whatever knowledge, insights and analysis I had accumulated over more than a quarter-century covering the Thoroughbred industry at Daily Racing Form, Thoroughbred Times, the short-lived Racing Times and Blood-Horse Publications. The phone wasn’t ringing off the hook and the inbox was far from overflowing, but I felt I had more to learn in this industry, and perhaps more to give.

The idea for a website was certainly not a revolutionary one. Existing publications all had brand extensions on the Internet and dozens of individuals, including some out-of-work journalists like me, had blogs, some of them very good. There were a couple of places you could go to find daily links to published articles about information around the racing world.

But I felt something was missing, and so the Paulick Report was created. It was my hope that individuals from throughout the Thoroughbred racing and breeding community would gather here each day, get the latest and most relevant news and analysis from a unique and independent perspective, and share their thoughts with others. I figured it was a longshot at best to survive, but I’ve never been afraid of a challenge. The last 18 months, have been incredibly challenging and busy—in a good sort of way—and that challenge has yielded emotions ranging from fear to exhilaration.

But as I sit on this Thanksgiving holiday in a Tokyo hotel room, thousands of miles away from home and family, and reflect back, the overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude. And I guess that’s what the spirit of Thanksgiving is all about. The launch of the Paulick Report in June 2008 was more than the creation of a website, but a generous act of faith from family, friends, associates and people I’ve never met, willing to give a second or third chance to someone who had no real right to ask for one.

Those who encouraged me to continue speaking out on this industry and its variety of challenging issues did more for me than you’ll ever know. Donors to the early “pledge drives” and businesses within the advertising community provided the funding to give this upstart online publication a legitimate chance to stand on its own legs, and allow me to retain a one-person staff in the indefatigable and creative Brad Cummings.

But perhaps the biggest thanks go to some of those individuals and industry organizations we’ve targeted for criticism. The easiest thing for them to do would have been to dismiss the commentaries as unfair, unwarranted or misguided—and I’ll be the first to say that not every shot was perfectly fired. However, many recipients accepted the observations and suggestions in the spirit for which they were written, performed self evaluations and in some cases took what I believe are positive steps.

You may not always agree with what you find here at the Paulick Report. I’d worry about you if you did. But I hope you will agree that the content and the dialogue created here is healthy for an industry that has, for far too long, not been amenable to public debate or new ideas.

Thanks for caring about this industry, for reading what has been said here over the past 18 months, and for sharing your thoughts on the issues that matter.

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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Liberation Farm celebrates the many horsemen and horsewomen who strive each day to make things better for horses and those who work with them.  To learn more about Liberation Farm, click here.

By Ray Paulick
Please click here to donate to Breeders’ Cup Charities benefiting the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund and V Foundation for Cancer Research. Give a minimum of one penny per mile and you will be eligible for a drawing to win one of 10 Breeders’ Cup caps to be signed by the winning jockeys of all 14 Breeders’ Cup races this Friday and Saturday.

ON THE ROAD FROM OKLAHOMA CITY TO AMARILLO, TX.—Somewhere near the Oklahoma-Texas border, while listening to the Broadway showtunes station on satellite radio, Brad Cummings and I heard Alfred Drake’s booming voice singing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” from the 1940s hit musical “Oklahoma!”

How appropriate.

We’d left Remington Park a couple of hours earlier on our BREEDERS’ CUP OR BUST fundraising drive, and, oh, what a beautiful morning it had been, as well as a beautiful day. From the moment we’d contacted the track’s general manager, Scott Wells, a couple of weeks ago, we had a feeling that Remington Park might be the highlight of this seven-stop, 10-day journey to raise money and awareness through Breeders’ Cup Charities for the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund and The V Foundation for Cancer Research.

We had no idea how special the day would be. Thanks to the track’s new owner, Global Gaming Solutions (a subsidiary of the Chickasaw Nation tribe), general manager Wells and his staff (particularly an amazingly creative and hard-working promotions coordinator, Joy Rose Murphy), and very giving jockeys, horsemen, and patrons, we were able to add nearly $25,000 to the money raised for the two charities, putting our total for the first five days above $60,000. We were overwhelmed by their passion for the cause and the gracious hospitality they afforded us during our 24-hour stopover in Oklahoma City.

Global Gaming donated $12,500 to the cause, well beyond the $2,000 we had been asking for segment sponsorships. Murphy, along with the 16 jockeys who, after the day’s regular program was over, competed against Brad and me (more like humiliated us) in a pair of “hippity hop races” on big rubber balls, raised more than $10,000 to sponsor each starter in the races. And two well-cast young ladies roamed the facility and filled a pair of jockey boots with cash donated by track patrons.

Ray before the race

Ray after the race

Brad ‘hopping’ in race

But the BREEDERS’ CUP OR BUST fundraising drive is about more than just raising money. Remington Park really scored on this account, too. Jo Hayes, a former Remington Park jockey paralyzed in a 1997 riding accident and a beneficiary of the PDJF, was invited to take part in winner’s circle ceremonies and the presentation of the check to Breeders’ Cup Charities. She was also the subject of a heartfelt video tribute produced by Remington Park that recapped her riding career and her life since the racing accident.

As with our previous stop in Chicago, where we spent a day at the races with paralyzed former jockey Dennis Keehan at Hawthorne and then met with recently injured Michael Straight and his family, our resolve to not let these people be forgotten was further strengthened by the courage and dignity shown by Jo Hayes. The one thing I’ve learned about disabled former jockeys like Dennis and Jo is that while they may be out of racing, they haven’t abandoned their love of the sport. Jo still enjoys riding horses, though she admitted she gets frustrated that she can’t ride the fast ones anymore.

There was a sense of pride among the management team and many members of the jockey colony that Remington Park was the leader in raising money for Breeders’ Cup Charities. That may come from a feeling that Remington’s comeback from a near-death experience only five years ago has been largely overlooked on the national scene. This is a proud group, and for good reason.

The Remington Park comeback was fueled by legislation permitting slot machines at state racetracks. Before slots, according to Wells, purses at Remington Park had bottomed out to a paltry $64,000 a day. Currently, he said, thanks to the addition of revenue from electronic gaming machines, purses and state incentive awards total more than $250,000 per day, almost a 400% increase. It’s attracted stronger stables and better horses, and it should be a matter of time before it is recognized by more simulcast and account wagering customers as a top product on which to wager.

It’s interesting to compare Oklahoma to Kentucky. Both states have only a couple of major population centers and both have deep-rooted horse traditions. Christian values are equally important in both states, yet Oklahoma’s legislature had the foresight to allow racetracks in the state to play on a more level playing field with the 81 Indian casinos throughout the state by giving the tracks the opportunity to install slot machines. While Kentucky has no such competition from Native Americans within the state, its borders are virtually surrounded by casinos in adjacent states.

Remington was built by the late Edward J. DeBartolo in 1988 under the supervision of former track executive David Vance, who was on hand for Sunday’s fundraising activities. Twenty years later, it remains one of the best designed and comfortable facilities in racing, though most of its first-floor grandstand has been converted to an electronic gaming facility. Vance built a spirit of commitment to both the local community and racing industry within the track’s management team, and that commitment has continued through the bad times and good times that followed his departure.

We would like to thank the following individuals who sponsored the two “hippity hop” races: JoAnn Adams, Duane Harrel and Jimmy Harrel; Steve and Julie Asmussen; Danny Caldwell, Tim and Terry Doocy; Terry Edwards; Roger Engel; Global Gaming Solutions and the Chickasaw Nation; Ace and Randy Hare; Chris and Hillary Hartman; Heidelberg Family; Heritage Place; Joe and Hazel Lucas; Randy Morse; Glen and Joy Murphy; Kenny and Sally Nolen; Joe and Karen Offolter; Oklahoma Thoroughbred Association; Dustin Orono Photography; Tommy and Claire Page; Petalino Racing Stable; Danny and Sabina Pish; Pasquali and Palumbo Law Firm; Randy Patterson; Remington Park; Remington Park Jock’s Room; Remington Park Jockey’s Agents; Richter Family Trust; Carol Ricks; Rusty Roberts; Duane and Joyce Salisbury; Mark Sommers; St. Philip Neri Church and School; Gary Thomas; Von Hemel Family; Dr. Robert H. Zoellner.

I’d also like to apologize to my race sponsor, the Pasquali and Palumbo Law Firm, for putting forth such a poor effort when eased in the late stages of the “hippity hop race.” I did have an excuse, however: I was stuck in a bad post position, broke slowly, and never got ahold of the track. It’s clear that I was at least one or two workouts short of being fit for this spot. I think I needed a race over the track.

We also want to thank the following sponsors for the Chicago to Oklahoma City portion of this fundraising drive: Global Gaming Solutions and Remington Park; Terry Finley and his West Point Thoroughbreds partners; Tommy Simon’s Vinery; and Rick Porter’s Fox Hill Farm.

Sponsors for our previous segments were TVG; Bill Casner and WinStar Farm; Barry Irwin of Team Valor International; Kate Lantaff of Tahoma Stud; the William S. Farish’s Lane’s End, Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley, Brereton C. Jones’ Airdrie Stud and the Young family’s Overbrook Farm. A special thanks to our media partner TVG and the TVG’s online community for playing such a big part in promoting the drive.

If you’re interested in sponsoring one of the remaining segments of BREEDERS’ CUP OR BUST, please send an email to info@paulickreport.com or give me a call at (859) 312-2102.

We’ll be on the road bright and early Monday morning, headed to Zia Park, in Hobbs, N.M., for an afternoon of racing

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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