I frequently count myself lucky to live in a city with newspapers that cover racing daily. Both Ed Fountaine at the New York Post and Jerry Bossert at the Daily News provide handicapping, insight, and race recaps every racing day of the year; their focus is both local and national.

Bossert was on a roll this past weekend, in an unfortunately timed good news/bad news sequence of racing stories. On Saturday morning, he wrote about the racing deaths in New York in 2009:

A total of 53 horses suffered fatal injuries in 2009, the lowest total at the three NYRA tracks going back to 2002.

He provides further details on turf/dirt, racing/training deaths in the article.

His article on Sunday provided a sobering counterpoint as he related the death of Honest Wildcat in Saturday’s first race. While noting, as he regularly does, the death of a horse, his focus here is on the jockey. Following the spill,

…the soon-to-be 46-year-old [Richard Migliore] got to his hands and knees and crawled over to comfort his fallen mount, Honest Wildcat, who suffered a fracture to his right front leg.

Honest Wildcat was euthanized later in the afternoon; Migliore was released from the hospital later that day with a concussion and hopes to ride this weekend.

In other NYRA news, the Friday live chats, heretofore featuring handicapper Andy Serling, will this week give New York racing fans a chance to chat with Hal Handel, NYRA executive vice president and chief operating office. While likely best known for his work in the business end of racing, he’s also a pretty big hockey fan and a student of racing history. Handel and I have recently spoken on a number of occasions about a little piece of New York racing history about which I’ve long been curious, and his efforts have yielded some great news about which I hope to write in the near future. Like his colleague Serling, he is, I am sure, ready to discourse with the chat participants on a number of racing topics.

Staying in New York but moving off the track, the Belmont Child Care Association now has a Facebook page and a Twitter account from which I tweet daily. Follow us on Twitter, friend us on Facebook, and get news on BCCA events and photos of and updates on the children’s activities.

NYRA’s taking a mini-vacation this week, dark on Wednesday and Thursday with racing returning on Friday. And for those of you who might have regarded your 2010 calendar with some surprise upon noting that Wednesday, June 2nd—the Wednesday before the Belmont—was scheduled to be dark, fret not: NYRA announced recently that racing will indeed take place that day.