First, I want to congratulate Gary Stevens for a fantastic ride in the Preakness. He put all the other jockeys to sleep and cruised to victory. With that said, it’s disappointing that we will go another year without a potential Triple Crown winner. If Orb had won the Preakness, there would have been some great momentum for the sport of horse racing over the next several weeks.
Remember the excitement when we all looked forward to the head-to-head competition that was supposed to happen between Zenyatta and Rachel Alexander? And, how disappointing it was that the match-up between the two just didn't happen? Well, now the excitement is that Rachel Alexander has entered our breeding shed!
This Saturday, May 18, Kentucky Derby winner Orb will step onto the track at Pimlico Race Course to compete in the 138th running of the Preakness Stakes, the second jewel in the Triple Crown. Orb may just be the real deal. He's been working brilliantly and should love the track.
There have been several conversations where players mentioned that there were not enough General Tournaments at the classic distances (8.5 to 10 furlongs). We have built new tournaments, and should have them published by Friday, that will go into the automatic generation program for General Tournaments.
As we prepare for the new classification system, you’ll start to notice some changes now in reference to the Breeders’ Cup final races. Though none of these changes have any effect for our current competitions taking place in April, they will eventually play a role in our point system.
This one-time $1,000 claimer ended up becoming one of the greatest horses in American racing history, winning such renown stakes races as the Saratoga Special, the Carter Handicap, the Brooklyn Derby, the Saratoga Handicap, and the Empire City Handicap. Roamer won stakes races between 1913 and 1918, racing 98 times while crossing the finish line first in 39 races.
Yesterday we published the new 132.9 restricted blue trainer tournament category. I think they will become very popular very fast. The tournaments are open with the same variety of conditions the other blue restricted trainer tournaments have.
Today, one of the most successful American Thoroughbred champion race horses, Challedon, has been placed in the breeding shed. The winner of such nostalgic races as the Preakness Stakes, the Whitney Stakes, the Hollywood Gold Cup, Pimlico Special and Arlington Classic, Challedon earned the title of U.S. Champion Handicap Horse two years straight – 1939 and 1940.
We’re hoping by Thursday to release the new 132.9 BSR Blue Trainer Tournaments.
On another note, we have completed all the documentation to make the necessary adjustments in our current classification system. We’re still targeting the first week of May when we switch over. Hopefully we will be able to keep that schedule.
You might not know him by name, but Devil Diver is considered one of the top 100 Thoroughbred race horses ever. Born in 1939, Devil Diver made his first mark in beating the world champion Whirlaway. Devil Diver won many championship races including the Hopeful Stakes, the Brooklyn Handicap, the Whitney Stakes, the Manhattan Handicap and the Carter Handicap.
I’ve received some 50 private messages on this subject along with the 50 or so comments posted on several blogs. This doesn’t include the 20 or so emails Support has received. This weekend I read everything over and over again and spent all day Sunday hashing out ideas with several staff members.
The real horse racing enthusiast probably recognizes the name Grey Lag. This champion thoroughbred in the early 1900s got his name not because of his color (which was really chestnut), but because of the small grey patches on his belly. Trained by Hall of Famer, Max Hirsch, he didn’t win his first race until his fifth career racing start.
We released our new Bonus Program on Thursday. Players will become instantly available for it starting today. Whenever a player is active in any trainer tournament except Yellow, they earn credits. When they earn five credits, a player is given a token, which is an automatic entry into this Bonus Program. We built 24 Kentucky Derby simulated races containing equally-matched contenders.
Further modifications were done to the servers adding additional speed to the website. Though there’s a little room for improvement, overall, the site is now very fast and stable. The average load time per page has been cut down five times now over the last eight months. We’ll continue to make minor tweaks weekly in order to further enhance the overall speed of the website.
