A year ago, Gary Stevens hadn’t ridden in a horse race since 2005. Elected to the Hall of Fame in 1997, the jockey had retired at age 42, going on to train horses briefly before becoming a broadcaster for NBC’s and HRTV’s racing programs. On January 3 of this year, he announced that, at age…
Earlier this year, Paul Roberts and Isabelle Taylor published Racecourse Architecture, highlighting the world’s most beautiful and luxurious racecourses, among them Happy Valley in Hong Kong, Ascot in England, and Meydan in Dubai. In the book and in Roberts’ presentations on the subject, he suggests that as pressure for gambling dollars become more intense, the quality…
The holiday season can bring out the best in us, and racetracks are no exception. Though philanthropic initiatives proliferate throughout the year, at Thanksgiving and Christmas, racing people, both front side and back, make extra efforts to help those less fortunate. The holiday work of the Central Pennsylvania Racetrack Chaplaincy of America (RTCA) Council and…
He’s among the quieter riders out there, seldom seeking the spotlight, but as 2013 comes to a close, jockey Javier Castellano may well be on the verge of winning his first Eclipse Award. On December 13, the Venezuela native broke the single season earnings record set in 2012 by Ramon Dominguez, forced to retire earlier…
“The road to the Kentucky Derby might be through the Jungle!” cried Betfair Hollywood Park race caller Vic Stauffer on Saturday afternoon, as the undefeated two-year-old gelding Shared Belief romped in the CashCall Futurity, winning by nearly six lengths and making it look easy. An undefeated, stakes-winning two-year-old in a race considered a Derby prep…
On December 11, the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance announced its first significant round of accreditations, giving its stamp of approval to 20 organizations across the country. Among them were four Mid-Atlantic facilities: Angel Acres Horse Haven in Pennsylvania, Virginia’s ReRun, and MidAtlantic Horse Rescue and Thoroughbred Placement Resources, both in Maryland. Though applicants characterized the process…
Earlier this week, perhaps in anticipation of this afternoon’s Spooky Mulder Stakes at Aqueduct, Barbara Livingston posted a photo of Spooky himself, dueling with fellow game gelding Callmetony at Saratoga in 2006. Tony was a spritely five-year-old back then, Spooky an older, wiser eight-year-old. The race was Spooky’s 66th; Tony had raced in exactly half…
As the inner track opens for the 2013 winter meet, a look back into the archives, for how this unique racing surface came to be: It was nearly 70 degrees in New York yesterday; warmer temperatures and delayed darkness have many of us thinking spring. And for New York racing fans, there is no surer…
Horse lovers and auction owners make strange bedfellows. Oh, not those high-end, Keeneland/Fasig-Tipton/Lexington/Saratoga auctions, where well-bred babies are sold for hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars, before their careers even begin, before anyone knows whether they can run. Horse lovers, even the poor ones, flock to those auctions: we stand at the bar, we…
Last Wednesday, the Reorganization Board of the New York Racing Association approved a 2014 budget that included hikes in admission fees at Belmont Park and Saratoga Race Course, from $3 to $5 for the grandstand, and from $5 to $8 for the clubhouse. The increase is designed to offset an expected $1.8 million deficit caused…
Brooklyn Backstretch 