Week 1 of the Brooklyn Backstretch Kentucky Derby charity league is in the books, and we might already have a whiff of scandal…created by yours truly. But before we get to that…we’ve got pledges from 28 people for a total of $1,845, with some of that money already having come in. As I wrote in…
Hockey returned to the NHL this week after the Olympic break, our national loyalties reverting to regional ones, as the players against whom we rooted over the last few weeks once again become our home team. Whether NHL players will return to the Olympics in PyeonChang, South Korea, in 2018 remains to be seen; injuries to the…
Anyone connected electronically with Lisa Molloy began seeing her queries pop up on social media earlier this month. On Twitter and on Facebook, on personal and organizational pages, she began her own investigation, trying to get to the bottom of what she suspected was a scam. Late in 2012, a Booster.com t-shirt was set up,…
Late Sunday night, the New York Racing Association announced what appears to be a hastily called board meeting for this Wednesday afternoon at 2 pm. Originally planned for March, the meeting will take place at a new venue—the law offices of Weil Gotshal and Magnes, not the Empire State Development Corporation, where all previous New…
We know that we’re supposed to remember, always, that horse racing is a business. That even though we’re animal lovers, horses aren’t pets. That, as much as we cringe to read it, or to write it, they are property. That truth is hammered home nowhere more clearly than the sales ring, when a literal price…
Gulfstream Park: The Grade II, $400,000 Fountain of Youth at 1 1/16 miles–by Brian Nadeau of Horseplayer Now #1 Commissioner: The first of two from Pletcher was a game winner of an optional claimer over fellow heavyweight Top Billing here in January in what was his first start since August. Son of A.P. Indy is…
Fair Grounds: The Grade II, $400,000 Risen Star at 1 1/16 miles, by Brian Nadeau of Horseplayer Now. #1 Albano: Lightly raced son of Istan is a half-brother to Mark Valeski, who was second in this race for the Jones and Jones combo a few years back, so he’s bred to be a nice one,…
At first I thought—hoped—that it was an article from the Onion. But no—it was from the Associated Press. “Barbie To Feature In This Year’s SI Swimsuit Issue.” For real? For real. If anything having to do with a plastic doll posing in a swimsuit could be considered “real.” The publication of this year’s swimsuit issue…
Welcome to year six of the Brooklyn Backstretch Kentucky Derby charity game. We started in 2009, piggybacking on the Saratoga Special Derby fantasy league, and from 2010 to 2013, we used the Road to the Roses as the base for our league play. This year, handicapper and writer Mike Dorr (@mikdorr77), who writes about racing…
It was in 2008 that I first made the historical acquaintance of Hollie Hughes, a man who devoted himself to and made a life in horse racing, a man as closely linked to one of racing’s first families as anyone could be. In 2008, I wrote of Hughes and of Sanford Farm, the place where he…
Brooklyn Backstretch 