Flatter: Anna & McPeek are a promotional dream for racing

Oh, rescue us please from these dog days of summer. From Charles Barkley’s retirement plans lasting less time than a Kim Kardashian marriage to Pitbull getting a football stadium named for him to baseball considering a rule to make starting pitchers go six innings to get a win.

Football will be the easy answer to replacing this nonsense that pretends to be news. In our world, so will the Travers.

Thankfully, Kenny McPeek is the opposite of dog days, even if his yellow Labrador retriever Sonny might beg to differ.

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His Kentucky Oaks-Derby double with Mystik Dan and Thorpedo Anna really was all he needed to dine out the rest of his life. But McPeek is not resting on those laurels that happen less often than dry summers in upstate New York. He is taking full advantage of this opportunity to promote the sport on which he has built his career.

When he confirmed last month that Oaks winner Anna would take on the boys next weekend in the Grade 1, $1.25 million Travers, McPeek made sure he did it when the widest possible audience was paying attention to the Jim Dandy telecast on Fox. Not FS1. Not the Fox app. Big, over-the-air Fox. Where better than the home of “The Simpsons”?

Not waiting for the grass or even the main track to grow beneath him, McPeek immediately parlayed that declaration. Picking up on the underlying battle-of-the-sexes theme that comes with fillies taking on colts, he offered a promotional idea for Anna and the mid-summer derby.

“Pink hats, pink shirts, pink socks,” he said. “I’m going to be wearing pink. Anybody that’s pulling for Anna, wear pink.”

Forget about the burgundy silks. Could they paint the Saratoga infield canoe pink if she wins?

All this was a case of McPeek leaving no media opportunity unturned to promote racing. It was not exactly something new for him. Twelve years ago he created the app that came to be known as Horses Now. That was back when apps may as well have been operated with a hand crank.

McPeek’s forward thinking was met with slow but modest enough success that allowed him to sell the app and still have a role in its operation.

Every day since he said Thorpedo Anna would go in the Travers, McPeek has been on social media with a stream of new content. Videos of her gallops have been posted along with her daily schedule. When tropical storm Debby threw everyone for a loop last week, McPeek provided updates on when she would go out on the track.

The filly’s afternoon walk Thursday was chronicled with a video posted, what do you know, Thursday afternoon. Her Friday morning track work in the Saratoga fog was up on X before 6 a.m. EDT. So too was a comment from 75-year-old exercise rider Danny Ramsey.

“She’s mad at me,” Ramsey was heard to say as he was interviewed by, who else, McPeek. “She’s doing better now than before she ran the last race.”

Even updates on the ever-popular Sonny have shown up on the @KennyMcPeek X page. A photo of him standing on his hind legs Wednesday while “ordering a breakfast sandwich with a side of dog biscuits” at a Saratoga snack shack had more than 500 likes.

Although he is loyal to the racing media who have followed him even when he did not have the Derby and Oaks winners, McPeek constantly tries to extend that reach to the mainstream. One quest of which I have intimate knowledge is his desire to be on ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption.” If only the show were not on its annual summer hiatus right now.

“Tony (Kornheiser) and (Michael) Wilbon are invited to the Travers,” McPeek told me in a text message. All we need to do now is get Kornheiser to venture outside Delmarva and Wilbon to raise half an eyebrow for horse racing.

Cynics will claim that self-promotion is McPeek’s primary motive. Knowing about his quiet generosities, I would disagree. But even if that criticism were true, why can’t that be the tide that lifts all the boats?

McPeek turned 62 this month. It has been nearly 39 years since he saddled his first winner Final Destroyer, a horse owned by his dad who was running at River Downs.

Now McPeek saddles Thorpedo Anna, a filly owned in part by his wife Sherri under the name Magdalena Racing. He literally is invested in the sport.

A Travers win would give Thorpedo Anna a leg up in the race to be horse of the year. A Breeders’ Cup Distaff victory would give her the victory over older horses that she might need to clinch the championship, although the older division is not exactly chock full of comparative quality.

McPeek figures to be busy stepping up on stage at The Breakers in Florida this winter at the Eclipse Awards. Already, his long-held, wider view of the sport earned him a Big Sport of Turfdom trophy 22 years ago.

Regardless of what happens in the Travers, the sport would be in really good hands if there were more like McPeek.

And by the way, he had better be in the Hall of Fame soon.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.