03/05/2007 - New Orleans, LA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Circular Quay, the defeated Risen Star Stakes favorite, is the 9-5 favorite in a field of eight three-year-olds for Saturday's $600,000 Louisiana Derby at the Fair Grounds. The 1 1/16 mile race is an important stepping stone to the Kentucky Derby.
Owned by Michael and Doreen Tabor, Circular Quay will be ridden by John Velazquez and start from the inside post. The colt was fifth in the Risen Star when avoiding trouble after a spill involving Slew's Tizzy at the top of the stretch.
"He was flying by everybody at the end," said trainer Todd Pletcher after the race. "Obviously, we were very unlucky today, but I wouldn't trade places with anybody now."
Circular Quay was also the defeated favorite in last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile when he was second to Street Sense. The chestnut colt has earned $787,434 in six career starts and three wins.
Pletcher comes off last week's sweep of stakes for three-year-olds at Gulfstream Park. His Scat Daddy, ridden by Velazquez, captured the Fountain of Youth Stakes and King of the Roxy took the Hutcheson.
Soaring By, trained by Todd Pletcher and owned by Dogwood Stable, will start from post 7. Jockey Edgar Prado getting the riding assignment as the colt makes his third career start.
"Soaring By has been training well and working good," said Dogwood Stable's Cot Campbell. He is 8-1 in the morning line."
Imawildandcrazyguy, second in the Risen Star, will break from the far outside post with jockey Fernando Jara. The gelding made a nice rally to be runner-up to Notional last month at odds of 10-1. Notional is back in California being prepared by trainer Doug O'Neill for the Santa Anita Derby.
Imawildandcrazyguy, owned by Lewis Pell and Michael Eigner, is trained by Bill Kaplan and has won two of nine lifetime starts for $171,775. The three-year- old has been installed at 10-1 in the program.
O'Neill brings Sham Stakes runner-up Liquidity into the Louisiana Derby. The colt will start from post 5 with Corey Nakatani riding and is the 7-2 second choice in the morning line.
Liquidity is owned by J. Paul Reddam and has earned $146,200 with one win in five career starts. The three-year-old closed 2006 with a second place behind Stormello in the Hollywood Futurity.
Completing the field for the 94th edition of the Louisiana Derby are Ketchikan Slew's Tizzy, Birdbirdistheword and Zanjero. All entrants will carry 122 pounds.
Post-time for the Louisiana Derby is 5:43 p.m. (et).
The Louisiana Derby was not held last year. The Fair Grounds' 2006 meeting was conducted at Louisiana Downs in Bossier City due to damage from Hurricane Katrina.
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Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their “supplements” to worry about what their opponents are doing).
Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this won’t be an intelligent discussion.
Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).
Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.
Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a “truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit.” And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. “The plug-necked yahoos on your team,” you can say, “will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.”
The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesn’t focus only on your opponent’s team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.
What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Where’s your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, “I’ll try to type slower for you next time.” Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.
Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, don’t just conclude by saying your opponent is a “twerp who drafts like my grandmother.” Say that your opponent is a “sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars.” By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.
But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You won’t be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, I’m sure, to reply.
In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.
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