Welcome to year eight of the Brooklyn Backstretch Kentucky Derby charity league! We had a banner year in 2015, raising more than $3,000 for racing charities across the country. For the first time, we were able to award donation money to the top three finishers, resulting in an impressive breadth and number of organizations that…
Oaklawn Park: The GIII, $500,000 Southwest at 1 1/16 miles (Kentucky Derby qualifying points: 10-4-2-1) #3 Collected (5-2): Son of City Zip represents another Santa Anita invader for Baffert, who has won about 15 of these OP 3yo prep over the past decade or so, including a pair last year with Triple Crown hero American…
Golden Gate Field: The GIII, $200,000 El Camino Real Derby at 1 1/8 miles (Kentucky Derby qualifying points: 10-4-2-1) With synthetic racing going out of flavor in recent years, there’s little doubt that Golden Gate’s signature Kentucky Derby prep has followed suit, but if nothing else, this year’s renewal offers a deep, competitive and robust…
On January 16, Sheila Rosenblum stood on the stage at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Florida, clutching a statue of Eclipse, the legendary 18th century racehorse for which Thoroughbred racing’s highest awards are named. Moments before, her six-year-old mare La Verdad had been named 2015 champion female sprinter, and if there had been any doubt before…
Santa Anita: The GIII, $150,000 Robert B. Lewis at 1 1/16 miles (Kentucky Derby qualifying points: 10-4-2-1) #1 Let’s Meet in Rio (6-1): The first of two from Baffert may get ignored a bit with his more heralded stablemate Mor Spirit taking all the money, but he was a solid second in the local GIII…
“COASTAL MOON tracked the pace setters most of the way, asked for run turning for home but was overwhelmed by outside runner, lost ground but fought back with a game performance… REBEL SPY trailed well off the rest of the field and hit his best stride late… RED POND was through after half a mile.”…
When Robert Barbara was a 10-year-old growing up in Canarsie, N.Y., a Brooklyn neighborhood that borders Jamaica Bay, his teenaged brother bought a horse to ride at a nearby stable in Mill Basin. Before long, it was the younger brother who had taken his place in the saddle. His talent evident, Barbara was soon competing…
Neither a champion nor a Hall of Fame inductee, Busanda nonetheless lives on in two ways: through her bloodlines and one of those Aqueduct winter races that, when I first started following races, sent me to the archives to figure out who those eponymous horses were. I don’t know whose idea it was to name a…
On the day that the Holy Bull Stakes was run at Gulfstream Park, a son of that 1994 Horse of the Year added to his Kentucky Derby points total with a win in the Grade III Withers at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, New York. Sunny Ridge earned 10 Derby points with his Withers win, adding…
“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…
Brooklyn Backstretch 