The Kentucky Derby is less than two weeks away, and for months, the sport has focused obsessively on the three-year-old male horses that will run at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May, in the event often referred to as the only horse race most Americans care about. Lost in the hoopla can be…
“He alone made it what it is today.” So began 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…
Between August 15, 2009 and March 8, 2012, Saginaw won seven races. He raced 22 times, most of them for the man who bred him, Ted Taylor, earning $277,690, mostly in optional claimers. By pretty much any measure, he was a racing success. Last year, though, Saginaw became a star. In March 2012, Drawing Away…
Maryland-bred Bold Affair, repeat winner last month of the Primonetta Stakes at Pimlico, has been retired, according to her owner Charles Reed. Reed owns and co-bred the Two Punch mare in partnership with Mike Zanella. The five-year-old Bold Affair is out of Hunka Hunka Lori Z (Colonial Affair), purchased by Reed as a yearling at…
Call me “the woman who left Keeneland to drive to Charles Town.” It’s true, even if no one would believe it. Charles Town Races sits in the Blue Ridge Mountains, roughly equidistant, a 90-minute car trip, from both Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It’s been around since 1933, and visitors walking through the facility will see…
On Saturday night, Joe Torre was sitting in the restaurant at Charles Town Races in West Virginia, about 75 miles west of Baltimore. Among those at his table was his friend Bernie Schiappa, and they were there to watch their horse, Game On Dude, run in the $1.5 million Charles Town Classic. Torre and Schiappa go back…
Keeneland: The Grade III, $200,000 Lexington at 1 1/16 miles #1 Winning Cause: Well-bred son of Giant’s Causeway closed like a freight train when winning at seven furlongs earlier in the meet to raise his local mark to 2-for-2, and he rates as a real up and comer in this wide open GIII. Stretch runner…
Keeneland: The GI, $750,000 Blue Grass at 1 1/8 miles #1 Dynamic Sky: The first of two for Casse and Oxley drew a nice ground-saving post in this deep and oversubscribed field of 15 (only 14 will go) and gets back to the scene of his second place run in the GI Breeders’ Futurity last…
Oaklawn Park: The Grade I, $1 million Arkansas Derby at 1 1/8 miles #1 Carve: Local two-time route winner tries again after he was sixth, beaten nine lengths, when breaking from the rail in the local prep, the GII Rebel in March, and will need to hurry to factor today. If you’re looking for positives,…
Miranda Weber remembers going to Gulfstream Park when she was a little girl. She remembers that her mother liked the racetrack, and that they bet on horses. She remembers winning. She also remembers going to greyhound racing and to jai alai, but one horse racing memory stands out, even if some of the details are…
Brooklyn Backstretch 