Talk:Mucho Macho Man

2013 Sunshine Millions
Slight conflict of evidence. Best sources say he was pulled up, but others that he completed in last place. I haven't seen the race. The page has been regularly updated with result: I have tried to turn into it a better article by putting it into continuous prose.  Tigerboy1966  16:26, 3 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Good article improvement. I've noticed that the Equibase results sheets list horses pulled up as finishing last in the initial set of stats, though the narrative usually describes the outcome (note the Juvenile Fillies from Nov. 2, where Secret Compass broke down and was euthanized on the track, she's listed as finishing last in the basic stats, though the narrative clearly says she was put down)  my suspicion is that some writers are just sloppy and use the list at the top of the page and are incapable of scrolling.  Ever notice that we wikipedia writers who care actually wind up doing a better job than a lot of these reporters?  I suppose the double-checking and constant scrutiny our articles get is part of the reason why. Heeheehee...   Montanabw (talk) 19:45, 3 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Saw a clip of the race broadcast, he was pulled up but galloped (almost a canter) across the finish line, clearly not lame, but the jockey (Mike Smith in that race) stated there was "something wrong inside." Will go into the health stuff and get it all sorted out.  Montanabw (talk) 20:18, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

More source material

 * Follow up news stories list: Montanabw (talk) 19:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)


 * http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/81830/ritvo-counts-her-blessings-after-classic-win (note past health issues for MMM)
 * http://blogs.courier-journal.com/racing/2013/10/27/breeders-cup-mucho-macho-mans-camp-all-in-for-classic/ (good summary of pre-BC win record, notes horse's dislike of a sloppy track)
 * http://cs.bloodhorse.com/blogs/horse-racing-steve-haskin/archive/2011/04/25/ky-derby-trail-macho-man-was-born-to-run.aspx Excellent story on MMM early years, foal nickname and etc...
 * http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/80315/eighth-pole-key-for-mucho-macho-man Another Steve Haskin article, discusses the eighth pole quirk
 * http://cs.bloodhorse.com/blogs/horse-racing-steve-haskin/archive/2013/11/04/haskin-s-classic-recap-macho-grande.aspx Excellent Haskin recap post BC win
 * http://www.tmz.com/2013/11/06/the-village-people-love-mucho-macho-man-breeders-cup-winning-horse/ Village People connection
 * http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/other/fl-kathy-ritvo-mucho-macho-1108-20131107,0,1345048.story Good follow up article, notes MMM's dislike of sloppy tracks
 * http://cs.bloodhorse.com/blogs/horse-racing-steve-haskin/archive/2013/11/12/a-rainy-morning-with-kathy-and-mucho.aspx Steve Haskin's latest installment in the canon
 * http://www.asapsports.com/show_interview.php?id=94263 Post race interview with connections - full transcript
 * http://static.drf.com/PDFs/breeding/today/110813.pdf pedigree info
 * http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/othersports/eclipse-awards-mucho-macho-man-deserves-to-be-horse-of-year/2013/12/18/380b7694-67f1-11e3-8b5b-a77187b716a3_story.html# WAPO end of season analysis

Feb 21 story:
 * http://www.drf.com/news/mucho-macho-man-interest-sold-adena-springs

Article improvement
Hi all. Froggerlaura was kind enough to start a racing statistics chart for this article, but I've been trying to help, the horse has 23 races to date. Question: Any interest in trying to bring this up to featured article quality with an eye to having it run as TFA around the time of next year's Breeders' Cup? Can we assemble a team? Montanabw (talk) 07:00, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If the picture is admissible, I have another one of him winning the Breeders' Classic. I didn't want to upload it if there was doubt about the other one. Froggerlaura  ribbit 23:56, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll ping some gurus of image stuff and see what they say.  Montanabw (talk) 02:14, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you upload yours ? As you can see, what I was able to pull off that French TV video was of serious suck-egg quality.   Montanabw (talk) 18:57, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Pending updates
Article looks excellent now. Just a reminder that in mid Jan there are two things that will probably need adding. The Eclipse awards (MMM will at least be nominated), and the final LONGINES World's Best Racehorse Rankings (formerly the World Thoroughbred Racehorse Rankings) - MMM is 6th on the current list but will probably drop back to eighth behind Lord Kanaloa and Orfevre.  Tigerboy1966  10:15, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * We're only just beginning to enter 2013 on the stats chart (sheesh, the down side of a durable horse is entering a LOT of races! LOL!)  Ping:  Anyone know how to make the line spacing smaller?  The font size shrunk OK< but the line spacing is still based on a default, is there a parameter to shrink it??


 * Can you also ping this article (or pop it in yourself)when the Longines list comes out? And is that a linked article? I should be able to spot the Eclipse award stuff when it is released, I hope, but I won't be sad if you beat me to the punch.  I also want to add a bit about his assorted health stuff that hit him each year, see any problem with that?  I'd kind of like to put this one up for GA (got Kathy Ritvo to GA already, but her article is shorter)   Montanabw (talk) 19:01, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Can certainly deal with the Longines list. I'll be doing an article on it anyway. I think I'll do a redirect, Longines World's Best Racehorse Rankings to World Thoroughbred Racehorse Rankings.  Tigerboy1966  20:05, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
 * As for the chart, I think the biggest I did was for Fantastic Light. It looks OK, but I did have to do a lot of fiddling around with the column headings. I also saved some space by piping the course names (eg Sandown)  Tigerboy1966  20:05, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
 * PIping and forcing breaks helps, that's for sure. I think once I add the health hiccups stuff, I'll put the article up for GA, because it's going to get a lot of traffic once the Eclipse nominees are announced. You might want to see if Wise Dan needs a tuneup, he'll be the big contender for a repeat as HOY, and the racing press is having a great time right now debating if he's actually worthy or not... I think Will Take Charge and Game On Dude are OK enough, but always worth a quick tuneup.   Montanabw (talk) 20:16, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Pre-FAC comments
Per your request on my talk page :)

Overall, very solid. Expanding the lead is the biggest thing, followed by making sure refs are consistent and prose is accessible to non-TB-familiar people. A few other prose niggles, but nothing major. Dana boomer (talk) 20:16, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Lead needs to be expanded (I'm sure you already know this). Generally three to four paragraphs for an article of this length, but since there's a couple fairly large tables that make up a lot of the bulk, probably three paragraphs for summarizing the prose would be good.
 * Took the first whack, see what you think. Oxbow went through FAC with two and made it, just FYI. --MTBW
 * Ref #21 (Jicha, Tom) is a newspaper, right? If so, it should be formatted like the other newspaper articles used as sources.
 * I thought it was...I used cite web for all ? Where is the hiccup? --MTBW
 * For all of the other refs you have the newspaper as a "work", making it italicized. For this one, you had it as the "publisher", making it not italicized. I've fixed it so that it's consistent. Dana boomer (talk) 16:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Double check publishers. For example, #8 (Holy Bull profile) should have National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame as the publisher (it's the organization publishing the material), not the web domain (which is just hosting the material).
 * Fixed - are there others? (Need good eyes here... seriously) --MTBW
 * #65 Equibase or Equibase.com (the former is used for this ref, the latter for most (all?) of the other equibase refs). Double check to make sure they're all consistent.
 * Fixed--MTBW
 * #67, give full name for IFHA
 * Done --MTBW
 * Formatting for #74 versus #84 and 87. Consistency is the name of the game in FAC.
 * Bad eyes, can you be more specific? --MTBW
 * Just differences in the naming/formatting of "Paulick Report". I've now fixed. Dana boomer (talk) 16:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Background, "His dam is the 2001 Anoakia Stakes winner" - Sentence is talking about Mucho Macho Man, but comes just after a sentence discussing Macho Uno and Holy Bull, so the "his" to which the dam sentence is referring to is vague.
 * Froggerlaura got it, thanks!
 * I think that moving the note up to the end of the first paragraph of the Background section would probably be helpful for the reader. As a horse person I understand why it matters that he was born late, but someone who didn't understand the TB aging system would be going "huh?".
 * OK --MTBW
 * Background, "and was generally very fast out of the starting gate, which caused him problems in his early races" Is this referring to the fact that he kept tearing shoes off or something else not discussed in the Racing career section?
 * Mostly, I clarified that a bit. --MTBW
 * 2012 - In general, watch this section for racing jargon. The main one that stood out to me was "had been carried wide", which is not immediately understandable through context, especially for readers who aren't TB-race regulars.
 * Other examples? I linked some stuff to the glossary --MTBW
 * 2014, " they also decided not to run him in the Dubai World Cup" Why the sudden mention of Dubai? Was it actually a possibility? Is it common for winning American TBs to travel to the Middle East?
 * Yes and yes, Animal Kingdom (horse) ran and won it last year. --MTBW
 * Pedigree, " the Rios resold her at Keenland" Are we missing an "e" in "Keeneland" or is this a different sale?
 * You said on my talk page that he will retire at the end of this season. Has that been officially announced? If so, it should probably be included somewhere.
 * Yes, in the same source as the Stronach purchase, I mention it in the "Background" section where I summarized his ownership - is there a way it can be better done? --MTBW
 * Do you mean where it says "In February 2014, anticipating his future stud career,"? I read that as "at some vague point in the future, he'll have a stud career." If it's definite that he'll be retired, why not say something like "In month, year, it was announced that Mucho Macho Man would retire from racing at the end of the 2014 season. He will then be put to stud at xxx farm."
 * Unfortunately, the sources are not that specific; it's implied but no firm dates are set, maybe look at the stuff cited, particularly Blood-Horse. I amopen to ways to say it better. It can be inferred that he will retire at the end of this year, as the new part-owner is a major stud farm,  and the connections have all but said as much, but they haven't SPECIFICALLY said as much... see see e.g. 2nd paragraph of this source.   Montanabw (talk) 20:42, 6 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comments, Dana. You would be most welcome if you want to dive in and fix some of the things you have raised here; some of the small work I find difficult - I have recently been informed that I will probably need cataract surgery sometime this year, so that's kind of an excuse (remember that detached retina I had in '07?  The cataract is a consequence of that, plus one is starting in my other eye too - getting to be over 50 just sucks some days...)  I find the cite web template a bit frustrating, as "publisher" and "work" seem a bit redundant and I often only need one or the other.  "Work" will italicize, "publisher" does not.  Yet "cite news" is even more inconsistent.  Any thoughts on all that?   Montanabw (talk) 06:10, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * My mom had cataract surgery a few years ago - she had been delaying it and then one morning picked up a novel and couldn't see to read...called her eye doctor and scheduled an immediate appointment. She said she didn't care if she couldn't see well for other things, but that not being able to read was unacceptable :) She was miserable for a few days, but is now super happy she had it done. For the cite web template, it works like this: "Publisher" is the organization that put the information on the website. "Work" is used if the specific page is part of a larger work. So, if the University of Oregon publishes a web page called "Trees of Oregon" as part of their online "Oregonian Encyclopedia", then "Trees of Oregon" would be the title, "Oregonian Encyclopedia" would be the work and "University of Oregon" would be the publisher. Cite news is even easier: use "title" for the title of the article, "newspaper" for the title of the newspaper and ignore anything else. Additional replies, etc. above. Dana boomer (talk) 16:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Good to know that the cataract surgery is generally a good thing; the detached retina surgery was not my idea of a good time (If your mom wants to message me on FB, that would be fine I like to talk to other people my age who have had it done...) As for publisher and work, I get it when it's different, but, for example, Blood-Horse, I'mnever sure what to do when work and publisher are one and the same.  As for cite news, I've had trouble with that template producing results inconsistent to cite web, so I tend to use cite web for everything that I find online.  Also, I did a lot of the sourcing here with reflinks and missed fixing some of the automated things...  :-P   Montanabw (talk) 20:42, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Abbreviations
To make the Racing statistics table narrower, here are some ideas for abbreviations:

DT1RS

RTR

SS

There could be a key table for distances as below, allowing the race distances to be given as, for example, "6 fur" in the main table. On second thoughts, the "distance" column is wide enough to use "8.5 furlongs", so you don't need to abbreviate the unit.

There's no need for extraneous  inside the key table, but you may prefer "meters" to "metres". --RexxS (talk) 22:47, 10 March 2014 (UTC)


 * So, basically, two separate tables? Will this be copacetic at FAC? I find abbreviating the ownership to be really awkward, but could I just use * or † and ‡ or something?  Montanabw (talk) 23:40, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You could abbreviate the ownership, the distance or both, depending on taste and that would determine the number of separate tables. If you want to make the main table more compact, you have to put the information somewhere else: therefore you must have more tables because jamming keys/legends into extra rows of a table screws it up for screen readers and completely buggers the sortability. You could float the key/legend tables left and right so that they fit next to each other. The reader should be able to rapidly recognise an abbreviation, so wouldn't RTR be about 1,000,000 times more recognisable than * when standing for Reeves Thoroughbred Racing? (Check when you mouseover the abbreviation.) You won't get the column any narrower than the heading ("Owner") anyway. For what it's worth, I'd add that being able to sort on "Owner" is pretty worthless in my humble opinion, so that might save several pixels as sortable columns are always wider by the size of the sorting arrow icons. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 00:52, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I've demonstrated floating the key/legends in which I've now reverted back to your last version. --RexxS (talk) 01:19, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your explanations. I'll play with this. I think Froggerlaura figured out some way to make columns sortable without the little arrow icons.  Youguys who understand this syntax and markup stuff have my admiration!   Montanabw (talk) 02:34, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * , OK, now I have more questions about the chart: First off, why do we need "! scope="row" style="font-weight:normal;" for every entry?  Removing it appears to change nothing.  Second, at least in my browser (Safari) the font in the chart is now larger than the article body text font and thus, even after removing the "surface" column and abbreviating the ower names, the chart is wider than ever.  Third, adding the alt text for the †and ‡ symbols appears to have overridden the nonbreaking space and now that whole column is two rows high, which I don't want,plus the alt text version is not bolded any more, so now it looks funny.  Help?  or Fix?   Montanabw (talk) 23:41, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You're not using a screen reader, so if I've done it right, you should see very little difference between having a row header with scope or not. The ! means that the cell is a header, , rather than a normal data cell, , and the scope tells the browser that it's a column or row header. Marking up header cells for each column and row allows a screen reader like JAWS to navigate up, down, left, right around a table, hearing the row & column headers for each cell (like "Mar 26, 2011; race; Louisiana Derby") if the user wants to. The guidance is at MOS:DTAB and you'll find that all Featured Lists include this markup.
 * I have no idea why in your Safari, the font should be larger in the table. In Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer the font-size in both the main text and the table is 12.8px. You don't have any custom css as far as I can see. Could you mail me a screenshot and I'll see if I can work out what is happening. Is anybody else seeing different font sizes between main text and table? How does the table look now?
 * I can't fix the issue with the daggers. The problem with the † character is that screen readers usually skip it - see . There is a detailed account of the creation of the template †, which produces as an image, at Featured list candidates/Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster (C)/archive1 from three years ago - it does explain why we use an image with alt text. I've made an attempt to get over the problem by replacing † with * and  with #. I doubt that looks right either, so perhaps the best solution would be to use the reference system to link the main table headings with the key table captions? --RexxS (talk) 01:17, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I like that table better than the previous version - the text is bigger (same size as article body, on my screen). Nikkimaria (talk) 05:17, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I think I can make the asterisk thing work. WIll send you a screenshot; the difference is minimal, but maybe a point size or two.  As for the rest, if it makes accessibility work, I'm groovy with that.  Montanabw (talk) 21:08, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I like that table better than the previous version - the text is bigger (same size as article body, on my screen). Nikkimaria (talk) 05:17, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I think I can make the asterisk thing work. WIll send you a screenshot; the difference is minimal, but maybe a point size or two.  As for the rest, if it makes accessibility work, I'm groovy with that.  Montanabw (talk) 21:08, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

More research
Note to check on this interview: http: (blacklisted url) //www.horseracingnation.com/blogs/furlong/Reeves_Thoroughbred_Home_Breds_123#   Montanabw (talk) 20:44, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

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Progeny charts
This is an FA-class article and a progeny chart is a major addition. It is awkward, holds potential for edit disputes, and generally not suitable for this article, as the content can be discussed in the narrative text. Should the horse become a Sunday Silence and have massive numbers of notable progeny, a separate list article can be created. Montanabw (talk) 21:21, 13 December 2020 (UTC)