taking a stance

There are probably few other places in our life that awards a heteroclite or iconoclastic point of view than the race track. EVERYDAY I see folks both at the track and in LIFE who (as Wayne Dyer describes in his great book Your Erroneous Zones) actually disappear: they, themselves are GONE, and what we see are JUST the SUM total of the OPINIONS of the folks around them (who they are trying to appease). Never ruffle a feather, never express yourself. Don't bet the 7 because the CROWD says it is 8/1! Balderdash!

I keep a quote by Teddy Roosevelt near the computer and READ IT EVERDAY before I tackle the odds board. It is as germane today as it was in the last century when he spoke at the Hamilton Club in Chicago (1899):"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."