When we launched our 2021 contest, it had been only five months since the 2020 edition had concluded. As we launch this year, we’re still not sure whether last year’s winner will remain the winner. As always in horse racing, there’s never a dull moment. When I launched this in 2009, we were able to…
Family connections and the power of pedigree fueled particularly sweet victories for the connections of City Man and Giacosa, winners of the turf events for older horses on New York-bred Showcase Day at Saratoga Race Course on Aug. 27. The owners of both winners also raced their sires, millionaires whose bloodlines are infusing the New…
The winners of the Fleet Indian Stakes and the Albany Stakes at Saratoga Race Course are both lightly raced three-year-olds, but beyond that and their stakes wins on Aug. 27, the horses represent very different paths to New York-bred stakes success. Albany winner Americanrevolution boasts elite connections: bred by notable New York breeders Fred W.…
With apologies to Thomas Wolfe, this year’s Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale of New York-bred yearlings proved that you can, indeed, go home again. Absent from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 2020 because of the coronavirus, the sale returned this year, recording gains in all metrics. Sellers of New York-bred horses last year were forced to set up…
A man never at a loss for words, master of ceremonies Tom Durkin kept it simple Aug. 6 as he opened the 2021 induction ceremony for the National Racing Museum Hall of Fame in the Fasig-Tipton sales pavilion in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. “All I can say is, ‘Welcome back.’” This year’s ceremony did double duty, honoring…
On a chilly afternoon in early March, Naughty New Yorker came home. After a van ride from Port Colborne, Ontario, where he had been standing at stud, to Old Friends at Cabin Creek in Greenfield Center, the 18-year-old millionaire was restless. He paced his stall. He looked longingly out the window at the horses nearby…
Chris Feifarek may have a penchant for the fantastical in literature, but when it comes to horse racing, he is nothing if not pragmatic. On Friday morning, July 30, he sat in a box at Saratoga Race Course. It wasn’t his first trip to the track in upstate New York, but he’d never run a…
For the first time in a few decades, trainers Rick Schosberg and Bobby Ribaudo are working side by side again. Stabled together on the Saratoga backstretch, the two have between them more than 70 years of training experience. They’ve worked alongside the greats of the sport, like Allen Jerkens, Woody Stephens, and Sid Watters, and…
On Saturday morning on the backstretch at Saratoga Race Course, July 24, Maddie Rowland held the shank as trainer Elizabeth Merryman bathed her filly Caravel. The gray/roan filly extended her neck straight up, turned her head in profile, and posed. “She knows when the camera is out,” said Rowland. “It’s like she’s saying, ‘I’m beautiful,…
He should have been a contender. Of course, maybe he still will be. Right up until the starting gate opened for the Sanford Stakes (G3) at Saratoga Race Course on July 17, Maryland Brando looked like he was in with a chance. Though making only his second start, he had won his debut impressively at…
Brooklyn Backstretch 