For many New York racing fans who came of age too late for Secretariat in 1973, Easy Goer’s victory in the 1989 Belmont Stakes was the sweetest moment ever spent at a racetrack. I came across these words a few weeks ago in Joe Drape’s To the Swift: Classic Triple Crown Horses and Their Race for Glory.…
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…
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…
When we watched the 2008 Kentucky Derby, we all wanted to know: How is Eight Belles? What happened? When we watched the 2006 Breeders’ Cup Distaff, we all wanted to know: How is Pine Island? What happened? When we saw a five-horse pile-up at Aqueduct earlier this year, we all wanted to know: How are…
At first, it was just another version of disturbing: shortly after the beginning of the eighth race yesterday at Aqueduct, jockey Mike Luzzi was working hard to pull up Cloud Nine. Watching the turf race from the winner’s circle, we could see that a rear leg was badly broken–horse and jockey were directly across from…
The Rail, the New York Times racing blog, launched this week for the 2009 Triple Crown season, and this post appeared there yesterday. ***************************************** They certainly got the name right. One can imagine Mrs. John D. Hertz, breeder and owner of a brown colt born in 1940, looking at his pedigree—the colt was by Reigh…
Alfred G. Vanderbilt sure knew a Good Thing when he saw her, especially when it came to breeding. In 1946, he bred his Discovery mare, Good Thing, second in the Gazelle at age three but with an otherwise undistinguished race record, to Rosemont. And what do you get when add a Good Thing to Rosemont?…
As an anonymous commenter noted, Backstretch handicapper Brian nailed the Arkansas Derby, picking Papa Clem for the win; he didn’t do too badly in the Blue Grass, either, observing of second place finisher Hold Me back, “Formidable and due a ton of respect.” Can you give me the Derby winner, Brian? Please? He’ll offer a…
Brooklyn Backstretch 