Sunday notes/ The envelope, please

With the announcement of the Eclipse Award winners late Monday night, the extension of the New York Racing Association franchise due to expire on Wednesday, the remote possibility of a settlement of negotiations between the hostile partisan factions of philistines in Albany, the more likely additional extension, two major handicapping tournaments in Las Vegas and the bi-coastal Sunshine Millions on Saturday, the week ahead will be busy if not particularly compelling.

There is unlikely to be much drama in Beverly Hills, where the leaders of every segment of the racing industry are gathered to hand out bronze statues on Monday and discuss the current issues, of which there are many, often while playing golf. The four-legged winners are obvious and the bipeds who win are deserving of the honor.

Odd that the National Thoroughbred Racing Association-Daily Racing Form-sponsored National Handicapping Championship and the World Series of Handicapping at competing for attention in Vegas. The sheer sizes of both, however, illustrate the burgeoning popularity of handicapping competitions during the last decade.

I still believe that the format was used in one of the earliest of these tournaments, at the Cal-Neva, in Reno, was the best test. It required 10 bets a day over a span of four days, each putting at risk 10 percent of the day’s starting bankroll. Players put up $500 and on the first day and placed 10 $50 bets. When you tapped out, as many did on day one, you were out. If you lost $100 on day one, you placed 10 $40 bets on day two and so on. If your bankroll was $10,000 at the end of day one, you placed 10 $1,000 bets on day two and faced the possibility of elimination, as did every player on every day. At the end of day four, you cashed your voucher. Playing with real money changes the nature of a tournament, adds a new level of consideration and strategy.

Still, though the qualifying events for the January tournaments vary in format, the sheer enthusiasm of participation has resulted in literally hundreds of handicapping tournaments staged at racetracks, off-track facilities and on-line, a movement that is gaining momentum.

The Cushion Track at Santa Anita provides the underlying storyline for the Sunshine Millions, which is staged simultaneously in Arcadia and at Gulfstream Park with races restricted to horses bred in Florida and California. This is also the only racing event scored as a team competition and provides cheerleaders to encourage the participants and titillate the audience, a Frank Stronach trademark.

If it rains in Southern California, the contingency plan calls for moving the event to Golden Gate Fields, also a Magna racetrack, because of yet unresolved problems (note: This is a problem, not an issue.) with the vertical drainage system beneath the track.

Aqueduct: Jan. 21

It may be a civil holiday, which prompts a Monday card and a dark Wednesday at Aqueduct, but there is nothing on a program anchored by the Jimmy Winkfield Stakes (note: Jimmy Winkfield never rode at Aqueduct) that is playable. The inner track, which historically has favored speed, has been living up to that standard and never more so than on Sunday, when five of nine winners led at every call.