"It's a hard saying but the reality is evident: Curlin was beaten by two of the best horses in Europe, not by a couple of carpetbaggers who got lucky. Curlin met his match, fair and square, and did not quite make it. Remember this: Raven's Pass had to break the track record to run Curlin down and win the Classic."

The Breeders' Cup spin is that Friday was a day of record handle and that fans love the new format. But Steve Crist looks closer and finds that a year-to-year race-to-race handle comparison tells a very different story. Handle on the filly and mare races was down 32%, with the Distaff alone falling off by $3.2 million.

... and politics: "Every horseplayer under the sun could tell the Obama campaign that no one pays off in mid-stretch, even if the horse you are backing has a four length lead leaving the furlong pole."

... won't reinvent news. "5. Newspapers don't 'own' enough creative technological expertise (programmers, database/mashup designers, XHTML/CSS coders, video editors, Flash animators, graphic communicators, etc) to constitute a viable tech infrastructure." Racing suffers from a similar competitive disadvantage.

A small selection of marvelous old photos from Aqueduct, Saratoga, and Hialeah.

"Though it has from the beginning been a showcase for the best and the fastest horses of each racing season since 1984, the first quarter-century of the Breeders' Cup has been marked by a good deal of remarkable human accomplishment."

Redesigning the venerable Atlantic: A look at the process that led to the new nameplate (inspired by a previous incarnation of the magazine referenced on Mad Men, which is turning out to be the influence on design I predicted earlier this year) and layout.

Complete list, with links to full texts for many, courtesy of the Millions. William Nack on Secretariat is among the picks, as is the incomparable piece by John Updike on Ted Williams.

"After a few weeks of being on the cusp of recording his 4,000th career victory, the supremely gifted but oft-troubled jockey Pat Valenzuela finally broke through ... at Louisiana Downs." A remarkable achievement for P Val, a jockey who can't ride anywhere but Louisiana for now due to a lengthy history of drugs, drink, and suspensions.

Towards a new model of journalism. "The Web ... allows us to shirk the tyranny of recency and place more emphasis on context -- the information that often gets buried beneath the news."

Verdict of the numbers: "So is Zarkava the greatest filly to put hoof to turf? The ultimate racehorse? No. In truth she's simply the best three-year-old filly since Bosra Sham." According to one figure maker, Zarkava's rating post-Arc is 127, which puts her ahead of Big Brown, behind Curlin.

"The triumph of Zarkava and Christophe Soumillon in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe yesterday was instead a crescendo of reckless joy, un grand amour between two of the most bewitching talents in French Turf history." Independent turf writer Chris McGrath crushes out on the undefeated filly and her tousled jockey.

"Readers have become writers and the people formerly know as the audience are flourishing as content producers, expert sharers and self-guided consumers." About the media, but not only the media. The point applies across content/data businesses.

'However, we should be clear: this is not blogging; a blog brooks no development. That is, if development is the cultivation of a project moving toward a positive fulfillment." I've long pondered thought that blogging is about repetition, has no arc. As a medium, still has possibilities, as a form, in a rut.

Portfolio profile of Halsey Minor, whose bid to purchase Hialeah was recently turned down by current owner Brunetti. Only glancing mentions of Minor's racing activities, but much of interest about the rest of his career.

Web design is more than aesthetics. Visitors' sense of a site's credibility (and by extension, the credibility of the organization or publication it represents) very much depends on how well the site is structured and communicates its purpose.

Hybrid aggregator-news sites are on the rise, and the online media market is more complex than usually portrayed/debated. How will it all shake out? "The story to watch is not if, but how these hybrid models develop."

"There’s no particular background that gives you bragging rights to digital skills. I know people with thirty years of print experience who are superb at online. I also know people who aren't yet thirty and ... whose skills are shaky." Absolutely. Age/experience have little to do with web/tech savvy. Don't get hung up on natives/millennials.

NHL expands its advanced media offerings with live streaming video that's "TV quality," access to full archived video, and a real-time data feed. Lots of ideas in there for racing to emulate!

"Web 2.0 means software that gets better the more people use it. This is radically different from traditional software development, which gets better only when programmers add new features." Also true of data and analysis?

Alex Waldrop's wrap-up of the Vegas summit.

Preview of fan panel at NTRA summit from Alex Waldrop.

"The key to trust today, in any of these arenas, is openness and transparency. Hiding from the world is no way to get there."

October conference on the economics of digital sports media. Features keynote by MLB AM head.

"As the world turns on every verbal barb between the connections of Big Brown and Curlin, almost invisibly out west there's a filly barnstorming her way toward the game's highest honor rolls."