Looking Forward to a Great Year

By Dana Byerly, Hello Race Fans Co-founder

We’re back! And we’re looking forward to a great year, both for racing and for Hello Race Fans.

You may remember that in November we uncovered an exciting historical tidbit: Should Animal Kingdom, Shackleford and Ruler on Ice return to the track in 2012, it will be the first time since 1999 that winners of all three Triple Crown races returned to race as 4-year-olds.

Barring injury this looks likely as Animal Kingdom is working towards his debut in Dubai while Shackleford and Ruler on Ice are working towards the Donn Handicap (Ten Things) in early Feb. Ed DeRosa also points out over at the TwinSpires Blog that many of the likely Eclipse Award winners will return in 2012. All and all, there looks to be no shortage of talent returning, which isn’t always the case!

As for good news on the Hello Race Fans front, we’ve entered into a partnership with Brisnet.com that will allow us to bring you more data in our content! What does this mean for you?

– Free past performances for the races in our Derby Prep Alert (starting Jan 20!)
– Lifetime past performances and charts in our Horse Profiles and Ten Things posts
– More charts and past performances in our handicapping posts
– New, fun interactive handicapping posts (with prizes!)
– Weekly BRIS figs posted here in Trip Notes
– Occasional special deals on Brisnet.com products
– Fun, useful things we haven’t even thought of yet!

You may have noticed our first joint effort, the 2011 Eclipse Award Finalist section. You can grab the lifetime past performances of every finalist along with the results chart of their key race, all on one page! Once the Horse of the Year finalists are announced at the ceremony on Jan 16 we’ll update the page to include the top three key races for HOY contenders. We’ll also note the winners once they’re announced.

We also have a new feature called The Month Ahead where we preview the coming month from a racing perspective. Check out what’s in store for this, the second week of January! In addition to kicking off the third year of the Derby Prep Alert on Friday Jan 20, we’ll start the 2012 Weekly Roundups the following Monday, Jan 23.

So, here’s to another great year!