Bennett, Brown and Breeders’ – Brilliant!

Tony Bennett hit all the right notes on Saturday but only the NBC television audience could hear him due to audio difficulties -Photos by Terry Miller

By Terry Miller

It was one for the record books. Record heat for the time of year, exciting, not-be-be –repeated horse races that had the capacity crowd on its collective feet and two solid days of the Breeders’ Cup challenges at Santa Anita.
The usual celebrities were in attendance like Bo Derek and women wearing all sorts of lovely to bizarre hats. However , the big thrill for many in the stands was when legendary singer Tony Bennett walked on to the NBC set in front of the grandstands and waited for his cue to sing.
Sadly, most of the record crowd in attendance couldn’t hear Tony Bennett sing “The Best Is Yet to Come” due to audio problems that seemed to plague Santa Anita on Saturday. After Bennett finished, the horses were led onto the track for the final classic race.

The 85 year old is an Italian-American singer of popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz. Bennett is also a serious and accomplished painter, having created works—under the name Anthony Benedetto—that are on permanent public display in several institutions. He is the founder of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in New York City.

Raised in New York City, Bennett began singing at an early age. He fought in the final stages of World War II as an infantryman with the U.S. Army in the European Theatre. Afterwards, he developed his singing technique, signed with Columbia Records, and had his first number one popular song with “Because of You” in 1951. Several top hits such as “Rags to Riches” followed in the early 1950s. Bennett then further refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached an artistic peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart and Basie Swings, Bennett Sings. In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”.

Bennett has won 17 Grammy Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award, presented in 2001) and two Emmy Awards, and has been named an NEA Jazz Master and a Kennedy Center Honoree. He has sold over 50 million records worldwide.
After Tony Bennett stopped singing and was prepapring to watch the last race along with his wife, Susan Crow, Governor Jerry Brown made his way to the winners trophy area. After talking with Bennett, Brown was snapping pictures of the horses with his camera while Bennett and Crow looked on.
Back to the Races: Bob Baffert got beat again in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic last Saturday. Bill Mott settled for half of a repeat sweep in the weekend’s two biggest races.
The Hall of Fame trainers could only wince as 9-1 long shot Fort Larned won North America’s richest race on Saturday night, capping a weekend of upsets in the world championships at Santa Anita.
Fort Larned ran the race of his life, leading all the way to win by a half-length over Mucho Macho Man.
The highly anticipated Classic was strictly a two-horse race to the finish in front of 55,123.
Game On Dude, the 7-5 favorite, ran what Baffert said was “probably the worst race of his life” in finishing seventh. He lost in the closing strides a year ago at Churchill Downs.
“The prestige of winning this race in front of the world is unbelievable,” jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. said.
He celebrated his 27th birthday with the biggest victory of his career. Trainer Ian Wilkes could say the same.
“Fort Larned just gave us the greatest birthday present ever,” said Hernandez, the leading rider this year at Ellis Park and Kentucky Downs.
Fort Larned ran 1¼ miles in 2:00.11 in the showcase race of the two-day world championships at Santa Anita that was shown in prime time for the first time. The 4-year-old colt paid $20.80 to win.
Upsets dominated six of the day’s nine races, with Little Mike pulling off the biggest stunner at 17-1 odds in the $3 million Turf.
Rosie Napravnik joined Julie Krone as the only female jockeys to win a Breeders’ Cup race when she guided 6-5 favorite Shanghai Bobby to a head victory over He’s Had Enough in the $2 million Juvenile.
“As long as you’ve got the horse underneath you, you can get the job done,” said Napravnik, who started her career riding under her initials A.R. so no one would realize she was a woman.
Shanghai Bobby set himself up as the winter book favorite for the Kentucky Derby. The colt improved to 5-0 under trainer Todd Pletcher, who went 1 for 10 on the weekend.
“He’s got everything you want. He’s fast and courageous,” Pletcher said.

The final and perhaps most perplexing challenge of the Breeders’ Cup was the traffic trying to get out of the park Saturday night after the main race. Tempers were growing as the sea of vehicles was not moving for over an hour.
Limosines were blocking one of the main lanes to the Gate 5 exit, waiting for the VIP’s to meander over, thus causing a bottleneck. One frustrated driver told this reporter “ They’ll do anything to get us in here, even throw Tony Bennett in for good measure, but they obviously didn’t plan for this many cars exiting – it’s a joke…and not a very funny one.”

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