Two years ago, in a generally moribund racing month, winter racing in New York got a blast of attention when 9-year-old Evening Attire won the Queens County on a cold December afternoon. It was his second victory in the race; he’d also won in 2001, at the tender age of 3. Four horses in total…
There’s racing this week in New York, Kentucky, Florida, and California, but the eyes and attention of many in the racing world are turned southwest, to Tucson, Arizona and the annual symposium of the Race Track Industry Program at the University of Arizona. Those unlucky enough to be tethered elsewhere and missing this event can…
‘Tis the season of giving, and plenty was being given away on Saturday at Aqueduct. The Marines were at the Big A, collecting toys and cash donations; as I wrote last week, NYRA had pledged to match whatever money was collected; Gary Contessa was donating 10% of any earnings on December 5th, with a minimum…
Yesterday NYRA released its 2010 stakes schedule…well, sort of. According to NYRA president and CEO Charles Hayward, In the current economic climate and with other racing jurisdictions reducingracing days and adjusting their stakes schedule, we feel that it is prudent tomake the decision on the Aqueduct Stakes program only at this time. Weplan to monitor…
So it’s official: It’s holiday shopping season. Black Friday has come and gone; today is Cyber Monday, when, according to people who pay attention to such things, many, many work hours are lost by those taking advantage of their office computers to do a little online shopping. You likely have plenty of gift options for…
According to Matt Winn, she made the Derby “an American institution” (Hotaling). According to a New York Times writer in 1914, her entry in the Sanford “caused something of a panic among the others who had starters” (“Whitney Horses”). She made only 11 lifetime starts, but the mark that she left on racing is indelible,…
At the risk of scratching Teresa’s Aqueduct itch the wrong way, the Saturday after Thanksgiving usually signals the end of meaningful racing in New York until the Gotham rolls around the following March. The good news is that it always goes out with a bang, and this Saturday is no different. The traditional Aqueduct fixtures,…
A maxim of authorship, it is said, is to write what you know. And there may well be no turf writer who knows trainers better than Karen M. Johnson, author of The Training Game: An Inside Look at American Racing’s Top Trainers. The daughter of trainer P.G. Johnson, who died in August of 2004, Karen…
I never met Bobby Frankel. Never said a word to him, though as he came and went from the racing office at Saratoga, from which he often watched his horses race, it was always sort of temping to say, “Hi, Bobby,” as if we were old friends. He was ubiquitous, and so familiar that it…
The Christmas carols were blasting jovially from speakers throughout the Woodbury Commons outlets on Saturday; beyond the annoyance of the inundation when Thanksgiving was still ten days away, I felt a frisson of guilt with every reference to the joy of giving, as I was shopping pretty much exclusively for myself. Sometimes, though, an early…
Brooklyn Backstretch 