No, those two Zenyatta fans are not Brian Urlacher and Kevin Bacon. They are of course, Ray Paulick and Brad Cummings. Ray and Brad on the drive across America raised a whole whack of money for injured jockeys. With all the bad news we see in racing - the fighting, the sometimes-not-so-nice arguing - there is news like this and that has to make one smile. And clearly, Ray and Brad are Ray and Brad. They are not afraid to speak bluntly about some of their travels during the trip. I must say, I had a laugh when reading the piece for the Turf Paradise incident. Good news is good news and bad news is bad. Kudos to them for giving us the straight goods on their swing through Arizona. HANA is not the only place holding people accountable.
To read the synopsis from Brad, please click here.
Clicking around the interweb, we see another person giving it her all in racing. I don't know about you, but I find new fans infectious; maybe because I have been one since I was a wee lad and forget those days now. Dana Byerly is one such fan. Starting a blog called "Green But Game" which is emblematic of her newness to racing she commanded quite a following. She also got involved. She was on, for example, the Breeders Cup fan committee. She has always believed that racing can breed new fans if they work at it and she in part created a brand new website called "Hello Race Fans". This site, now in beta, is for the new horseplayer and fan. They can get answers to questions and in time should have everything they need in one spot to enjoy the sport as a newbie. HANA works on the problems of the game. Most of our members are long-time fans. But we fully support the Dana's of the world - we need to bring this fine sport to a new fan base. We urge our members and readers with websites to link that site up, or alternatively if you have a friend that you have been trying to get interested in racing, send them that link. We can grow the sport at the grassroots fan level if we band together.
Well done Brad, Ray and Dana. It is a good news Friday.
2 comments:
Dana has also set up an ad network that is a fantastic resource for small horse racing web publishers -- thanks Dana! (and any advertisers out, please take notice of it, support the small publishers that are doing outstanding marketing work for this game.)
RB
Wow, thanks for the kind words all! I started HRF with Adam Wiener, one of my best friends, but more importantly the friend who introduced me to racing. We want to build the site that we wish had existed when we caught the fever. Hopefully we can help make it much easier for interested folks to engage by being like the relative who introduces you to racing for folks not lucky enough to have a such a relative.
But it's not just us! Kevin from Colin's Ghost, Jessica from Raceday360, Ernie Munick from TRNY, Teresa from Brooklyn Backstretch, Lisa from Superfecta, Val from Foolish Pleasure/Fillies First and all star racing tweeter o_crunk are our contributing editors. No doubt we'll have plenty of other contributors once we roll out the next version in the spring. We also have many folks contributing to the "Letters to a New Player" series (including Ray & Brad!).
And yes, as Raleigh mentions we have an Ad Network! We want to 1) help support independent content producers and 2) make it easier for advertisers to reach fans / advertise in indies. Come check us out if you're looking to reach more fans / publicize your racing events & products!
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