Over the last couple of months, I’ve been dipping into To the Swift: Classic Triple Crown Horses and Their Race for Glory. The book, edited by Joe Drape, is a collection of New York Times articles, from 1875, the year of the first Kentucky Derby, through Rags to Riches’ victory in the 2007 Belmont. I’m…
When I lived and taught in London the mid 1990’s, I wasn’t much interested in racing. Somehow, shockingly, during my tenure I never once attended a horse race, though I did hear the BBC Radio 4 picks of the day each morning, for tracks like Lingfield and Doncaster, as I got ready for school. I…
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…
Superfecta has spoken. She won this year’s Brooklyn Backstretch Road to the Roses charity league, and she’s decided to split the donation between two organizations. The members of this year’s league came up with $300 in donations, so in Lisa’s name, $150 will go to the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation, and $150 will go to…
1:15 pm, Saturday, May 3rd. I am missing Aqueduct terribly. Instead of zipping from my neighborhood to the Big A in thirty minutes on the A train, I am motionless on the BQE, as I have been for the previous twenty minutes. Road work. Two lanes closed. “It’s a mess!” the traffic guy on the…
Well, by now we all know what happened in Saturday’s 135th Kentucky Derby. Or at least we all know what we saw. I think it’s fair to ask if we’ll ever know what really happened on Saturday. To briefly recap, the unheralded Mine That Bird took the racing world and 18 of the best 3-year-olds…
OK, OK, I give in! I’ve still got some pretty big reservations about this year’s Derby, but thanks to the thoughtful and persuasive comments on Sunday’s post, I agree that maybe I should re-consider my initial visceral reaction. I was impressed by the level of discourse and the thoughtfulness of (most of) the comments, so…
Well, it’s over: the Kentucky Derby is behind us, and with it, the 2009 Road to the Roses Brooklyn Backstretch charity contest. Congratulations to Sleipnir Stables, who kept her lead over the last few weeks. Please let us know where you’d like the money donated. A total of $200 has been donated so far, and…
This is one of those days when I feel bewilderingly alienated. All around me, people are excited about yesterday’s Derby. They’re loving that this longshot won, see it as a great moment for the sport, are digging his connections. I just don’t get it. I’m pretty psyched that one of the people with whom I…
So says 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…
Brooklyn Backstretch 