At the risk of stating the obvious, this year’s Triple Crown became something different from what we were used to the minute that Churchill Downs announced that it would host the Kentucky Derby on September 5. We’d suspected before that, of course. A month before the traditional Derby date, virtually the entire country was limiting…
As the drought stretched on, as years passed and horse racing faded in popularity, it became a commonplace to hear that the sport “needed a Triple Crown winner”. A horse that could win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont would invigorate the sport, some thought. It would bring much-needed attention from casual fans,…
The horse racing world erupted when American Pharoah won the Triple Crown in June, and it erupted again on Monday morning when Sports Illustrated announced that Serena Williams had been chosen by the magazine’s editors as the 2015 Sportsperson of the Year. Funny that, Sportsperson. The day before, SI noted that American Pharoah had been…
Every morning at 5:30, Kelvin Pahal arrives at work. Rain or shine, hot or cold, he travels the five minutes from his home in Queens Village to the backstretch of Belmont Park, where for the next five hours he rides horses, preparing them to race. The life of an exercise rider can be fairly routine,…
The official announced attendance for the 2004 Belmont Stakes, the year the much-loved Smarty Jones attempted to become the 12th winner of the Triple Crown, was 120,319, breaking the old record of 103,222, set two years previous, when War Emblem, like Smarty Jones, failed to win the third leg of horse racing’s greatest quest after winning the first…
Belmont Park: The Grade I, $1.5 million Belmont Stakes at 1 ½ miles #1 Medal Count: Turf and Polytrack specialist is being overlooked off his eighth-place finish in the Kentucky Derby, but go back and watch the replay again and see all the trouble he had while full of run off the far turn; it’s…
Only one more race stands between California Chrome and horse racing’s Triple Crown, but it could be his toughest challenge yet. Since 1978, a dozen horses — Sunday Silence, War Emblem and Smarty Jones among them — have won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, only to stumble before the finish line at the Belmont…
At Saratoga Race Course last summer, Chris Kay proved himself to be a man who likes a big event, as he embraced a summer of stakes and celebrations in honor of 150 years of racing in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Through the fall, winter, and early spring, Kay’s profile was decidedly lower, but as he approaches…
California Chrome will run in the Belmont Stakes, and he will wear the nasal strips that caused such a furor over the last 36 hours. Acting with unusual celerity in an industry in which change is seldom enacted easily, the New York State Gaming Commission, which regulates Thoroughbred racing in the state, issued a release…
The paint on the weathervane at Pimlico, which carries the colors of the Preakness winner, had barely dried before California Chrome’s Triple Crown bid erupted in controversy. The chestnut colt’s length and a half victory on Saturday afternoon put to rest any lingering doubts that his performance in the Kentucky Derby was the result only…
Brooklyn Backstretch 