Shortly after booking tickets to my first Kentucky Derby three years ago, I realized, with no small amount of regret, that the first Sunday in May that year was Mother’s Day. Instead of being in Saratoga with my mom that day, I’d be travelling home from Louisville. It didn’t feel the right thing to do,…
There is something unsettling about the name of Peter Pan, the 1907 Belmont Stakes winner by Commando out of Cinderella. Thinking about Cinderella giving birth to Peter Pan is the stuff that childhood nightmares are made of, and “Commando” certainly brings up rather a different image from Prince Charming. Peter Pan’s racing career was relatively…
Kentucky Derby 140 is in the books, and now the talk of the first Triple Crown winner since 1978 begins. But before we move on to Baltimore to see if California Chrome can head to Belmont Park on June 7 to make racing history, let’s wrap up Kentucky Derby weekend. The story of California Chrome has…
In a scenario that I’d have thought less likely than my hitting the Kentucky Derby superfecta, NPR’s Only A Game asked me to talk about…Derby Fashion. “For a select not-so-few, the Kentucky Derby is about bringing to the starting gate a horse that, however temporarily, will be a candidate for racing’s Triple Crown. “For the not-so-select many,…
So began a 1949 New York Times article by Arthur Daley on the passing of Matt Winn. The article was called “The Passing of a Legend,” and what he “made” is the Kentucky Derby. Matt Winn, a racing impresario if ever there was one, worked at a dozen or more tracks in his life, but this Louisville…
We’re a little more than 24 hours away from the big race, and while John Perotti has accumulated a daunting number of points at the top of our charity league leaderboard, the 525 points on the line at Churchill mean that an awful lot of of players still have a chance win the league and the $1800 charity…
When Danza crossed the finish line first in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby on April 12, he had plenty of people cheering him on at Oaklawn Park. He also had a serious, albeit smaller, cheering section at Henry Clay’s in Lexington, Kentucky, where Pam Robinson was having dinner with Ressa Harris, one of the clients…
We’re less than 48 hours out from the Kentucky Derby, but the final field may still not be set. Trainer Bob Baffert announced this morning that Hoppertunity, considered a contender by many, would be scratched due to a foot injury, making room for Pablo Del Monte to draw in off the also-eligible list. Trainer Wesley…
To some observers, the most damning element of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) video of trainer Steve Asmussen’s barns is that it reveals nothing that violates racing’s medication rules. That video, released in March and covered by The New York Times, purported to show what really goes on behind the scenes of a…
Brooklyn Backstretch 