Belmont Park: The Grade I, $1 million Belmont at 1 1/8 miles (Kentucky Derby qualifying points: 150-60-30-15) Brian handicaps at Capital OTB and Horseplayer Now, and he’ll offer analysis and selections of Derby points races, hoping to make us all a little money as we head to the Belmont Stakes. Follow him on Twitter here. #1 Tap It to…
California Chrome didn’t win the Triple Crown, but within hours of his failed bid to make racing history, the New York Racing Association was nonetheless declaring Belmont Stakes day a success, pointing to high attendance and record-setting handle numbers. Official attendance was 102,199, lower than the announced (and oft-questioned) attendance of 120,139 in 2004, Smarty…
Every morning at 5:30, Kelvin Pahal arrives at work. Rain or shine, hot or cold, he travels the five minutes from his home in Queens Village to the backstretch of Belmont Park, where for the next five hours he rides horses, preparing them to race. The life of an exercise rider can be fairly routine,…
The official announced attendance for the 2004 Belmont Stakes, the year the much-loved Smarty Jones attempted to become the 12th winner of the Triple Crown, was 120,319, breaking the old record of 103,222, set two years previous, when War Emblem, like Smarty Jones, failed to win the third leg of horse racing’s greatest quest after winning the first…
Belmont Park: The Grade I, $1.5 million Belmont Stakes at 1 ½ miles #1 Medal Count: Turf and Polytrack specialist is being overlooked off his eighth-place finish in the Kentucky Derby, but go back and watch the replay again and see all the trouble he had while full of run off the far turn; it’s…
In early 2009, trainer Jimmy Jerkens was flying high – if such a phrase could be used to describe a man better known for shying from the spotlight than for grabbing headlines. He had married his high school sweetheart the year before, and he had a barn full of fast horses, including a brilliant colt…
Only one more race stands between California Chrome and horse racing’s Triple Crown, but it could be his toughest challenge yet. Since 1978, a dozen horses — Sunday Silence, War Emblem and Smarty Jones among them — have won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, only to stumble before the finish line at the Belmont…
At Saratoga Race Course last summer, Chris Kay proved himself to be a man who likes a big event, as he embraced a summer of stakes and celebrations in honor of 150 years of racing in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Through the fall, winter, and early spring, Kay’s profile was decidedly lower, but as he approaches…
Optimism was evident May 28 as the board of directors of the New York Racing Association heard Chris Kay, president and CEO, detail a number of improvements customers can expect on what could be an historic Belmont Stakes (gr. I) day.Also fueling the optimism was the realization of a number of capital projects at Aqueduct Racetrack.…
California Chrome will run in the Belmont Stakes, and he will wear the nasal strips that caused such a furor over the last 36 hours. Acting with unusual celerity in an industry in which change is seldom enacted easily, the New York State Gaming Commission, which regulates Thoroughbred racing in the state, issued a release…
Brooklyn Backstretch 