A minor brouhaha emerged on Twitter earlier this week when word began to spread that Laurel Park’s General George Stakes (G3) had been re-christened the General’s Stakes, with some observers claiming that the Maryland Jockey Club was trying to erase George Washington, the race’s namesake according to the MJC media guide, which also claims that Washington…
Saratogians are proud of the Travers Stakes. Most of the thousands of fans who show up every year probably don’t know that the race was first run in 1864, or that it was named for one of the men who established Saratoga Race Course; they do know that the day of the Travers is something…
As Alan Foreman sat watching the aftermath of the Kentucky Derby last Saturday afternoon, he had a Yogi Berra moment. “It was déjà vu all over again,” he said by phone this week. In 1980, Foreman was the state attorney representing the Maryland Racing Commission in Bertram and Diana Firestone’s appeal of the stewards’ decision in that…
If your horse has won a graded stakes race at Saratoga recently, you’ll know her face. If you’ve attended the morning workouts at Saratoga over the last few years, you’ll know her voice. And if you watched the trophy presentation after the Grade 3 Shuvee at Saratoga on July 29, you heard her name: Maude…
According to the Maryland Jockey Club’s logo for the feature race at Pimlico this Saturday, this year is Preakness 143. That would mean that the first edition of the race was run in 1873, when Survivor won it. (1918 counts twice, because there were two divisions that year.) If you go by the June 3,…
“My lady prioress, and by your leave, So that I knew I should in no way grieve, I would opine that tell a tale you should, The one that follows next if you but would. Now will you please vouchsafe it, lady dear?” “Gladly,” said she, and spoke as you shall hear. (Chaucer’s The Prioress’s Tale)…
The stakes schedule at Saratoga at the turn of the last century was already robust. Announced in February in the New York Times for the 1901 season, it featured 25 races worth a total of $85,000. Among those to be run were the Adirondack, Spinaway, Travers, Alabama and Saratoga Cup. The racing meet that year was 22…
For thirty years and more there was hardly a great race run in which one of their horses did not figure conspicuously. They were a city-bred pair, but they possessed an instinctive knowledge of horses and a talent for management that made them formidable from the beginning of their career. William H.P. Robertson, The History of…
By the eve of the last century, the Suburban Handicap had already been run 15 times, a fixture at the old Sheepshead Bay track in Brooklyn, already established, according to The New York Times, as “one of the great Spring handicaps.” That last 19th century renewal of the race was held on June 17, the cusp…
Though the first Belmont Stakes was run in 1867, it wasn’t run at Belmont Park until 1905. The race was inaugurated at Jerome Park in what is now the Bronx, where it stayed until 1889, when it moved to Morris Park, also in the Bronx. Run there until Morris Park closed in 1904, the Belmont…
Brooklyn Backstretch 