Arrived in Lexington just late enough to miss the last race; as I entered Keeneland, hordes were exiting, but still, it was rather nice to witness the place in quiet, golden, late afternoon/early evening sunshine… Drove today from just north of Baltimore to Lexington, with an extended, simultaneously frustrating and gratifying pit stop at Charles…
Updated: This post appears today on website of The Blood-Horse, in the new Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance “stall” in the Blood-Horse blog stable, and I intended to post a link to the Blood-Horse site, rather than put the piece in both places. The article that I sent to be published was originally formatted in such a…
Just a couple of thoughts before heading to Saratoga for the weekend; the Oklahoma is still open, so I’m hoping to head over there for autumn workouts, which are just as wonderful as summer workouts. I did read recently, though, that repairs on the Oklahoma drainage systems had led to all of the horses being…
I was recently musing about whether there might be some life-sustaining, mortgage-paying way to combine racing and education; while many companies employ educators and establish education programs about their work, my sense has been that most of them don’t pay a lot and don’t provide the same sort of perks (read: vacations) that my current…
Keeping good company, in Meatpacking District destination Pastis… …and courtesy of T.D. Thornton, of Suffolk Downs and Not by a Longshot: A Season at a Hard-Luck Horse Track, from Garrison Savannah Racetrack in Barbados…
A recent conversation at Railbird has attracted a number of contributors weighing in on what racing needs to do to market itself. Given the upcoming NTRA marketing summit in which a number of internet racing writers will participate (including Jessica at the aforementioned Railbird, Dana at Green but Game, Patrick at Handride, and Kevin at…
In an attempt to re-create the magic moments of a Saratoga summer morning, I headed to Belmont early on Saturday to watch workouts and wander the backstretch. I got there around 8 am, grabbed coffee at the Belmont café on the ground floor of the clubhouse (walking around without a cup of coffee feels like…
If you grow up in Saratoga, you can’t escape Humphrey S. Finney. Much like the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg overlooking the ashes, Finney’s been there, on East Avenue just north of the track, hovering over the sales, since 1968, ; even if you don’t know who he is or why there’s a pavilion named…
So Roger Federer won his fifth straight US Open title yesterday. It’s a shame that not many of us got to see his dominating win, and we can blame CBS at least in part for that, for refusing to have both men’s semi-finals begin early on Saturday, before the rain moved in. Had they done…
On Saturday at Saratoga, the main event, the Grade I Woodward, will be preceded by the Grade I Forego, named for the horse who won the Woodward for four consecutive years (1974 – 1977) and who was named Horse of the Year in the first three of those years. That the Forego and the Woodward…
Brooklyn Backstretch 