“Originally this race was run over the memorable six-furlong straight course at Morris Park, then the newest and most elaborate of Metropolitan racing plants—which was a bit down grade and for that reason nicknamed the “toboggan slide”. (sic) (Hervey) As racing historian John Hervey notes above, the name of the Toboggan has nothing to do…
“Originally this race was run over the memorable six-furlong straight course at Morris Park, then the newest and most elaborate of Metropolitan racing plants—which was a bit down grade and for that reason nicknamed the “toboggan slide”. (sic) (Hervey) As racing historian John Hervey notes above, the name of the Toboggan has nothing to do…
Originally this race was run over the memorable six-furlong straight course at Morris Park, then the newest and most elaborate of Metropolitan racing plants—which was a bit down grade and for that reason nicknamed the “toboggan slide”. (sic) (Hervey) It’s fitting that a race called the Toboggan is going to be run on a day…
The child, sitting down with the old man close behind…had been thinking how strange it was that horses who were such fine honest creatures should seem to make vagabonds of all the men they drew about them… Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop Dickens couldn’t possibly have been thinking of Correction when he wrote those…
The winner of the feature race on Monday at Aqueduct, it was noted, ran gate-to-wire, starting in front and ending that way as the race’s second wagering choice. And yet, despite the bettors’ confidence, the outcome was extraordinarily unusual, and all but unnoticed. The winning owners are brothers who were born in Jamaica: Gaston and…
Originally this race was run over the memorable six-furlong straight course at Morris Park, then the newest and most elaborate of Metropolitan racing plants—which was a bit down grade and for that reason nicknamed the “toboggan slide”. (Hervey) When the first edition of the Toboggan was run, back in 1890, the race’s creators couldn’t possibly…
“No man in the country was more widely esteemed by racing men.” David Dunham Withers was born in 1822 in New York City; he and his family lived downtown on Greene Street, now in fashionable Soho. When his parents married, the couple was given a cottage by the bride’s father as a wedding present. According…
The graded stakes run earlier this month at Aqueduct have been around for a while: the Toboggan was first run in 1890, the Withers in 1874. When racing came back to New York in 1913, both were renewed, both at Belmont Park. The Withers was run on May 31, the day after racing returned for…
You can watch the race, including its troubled start and one of the horses—presumably the winner—getting rubbed afterwards, and then read the incredibly detailed account of the race in the next day’s New York Times. The amount of coverage the race the got, the number of column inches, boggles the mind of the contemporary reader.…
On this weekend when a team that plays in New Jersey will be nominally representing New York in the Super Bowl, it seems only fitting that a race named for a man whose racing life was based in the Garden State will be run at Aqueduct. Like the New York Giants, David Withers got his…
Brooklyn Backstretch 