You’ve been inundated with racing holiday gift suggestions: last week I talked about movies: Lost in the Fog by John Corey, who offers Brooklyn Backstretch readers a discount (here’s what I wrote about the movie when I saw it last August); and The First Saturday in May, about the road to the 2006 Derby by…
On Saturday afternoon, the Belmont Child Care Association held its seventh annual holiday party for the children of Anna House. Scheduled to begin at 1 pm, the party started a little early to accommodate the hundreds of children and families lined up, so that the children could choose gifts to give to their family members.…
There was no storybook ending to the Ladies Handicap on Sunday afternoon. Sweet Goodbye, the choice of those poetically inclined, finished last, providing no historically appropriate ending to this race, the last of which I can only hope that we have not seen. One horse’s misfortune, though, is another’s glory, and even the most sentimentally-inclined…
When my students and I discuss literature, we talk a lot about authorial intent: How do we find out what it is? Does it matter? Is it meaningful/significant if we find meaning/significance in something that the author didn’t intend, or even rejects? Mostly, I tell them to rely on the words of the page, to…
Got an e-mail yesterday from NYRA titled “Ladies Handicap—Sweet Goodbye.” That’s nice, I thought; NYRA recognizes the importance of the race and is going to acknowledge that it may not be run again. Silly me. Sweet Goodbye, trained by Christopher Grove, drew the four hole and will be ridden by Juan Acosta. The good news…
Andy Serling of NYRA writes with some updates/info on recent topics. Commenter LJK wrote on Monday to call attention to Conformondi, who went down after winning at Aqueduct last week; he said that it looked “catastrophic,” but Serling tells us that the horse only stumbled, and got up and walked off the track on his…
When last we saw Saratoga Russell, he was struggling home last in the Gotham. He’d gone to the lead and faded badly in the stretch, emerging from the fog to stagger home. He had been so impressive to that point: second in his first start in November 2007 at Aqueduct, setting sizzling fractions before National…
Don’t forget: Toys for Tots at Aqueduct on Saturday! Marines will be on the first floor of the clubhouse accepting unwrapped toys from noon to 2 pm. You can also donate cash; make checks payable to Toys for Tots. And odds be damned, I’ll be rooting for Gary Contessa’s five entries on Saturday, as he’s…
Saratoga Russell is back! This colt was my winter/spring crush until his dismal performance in the fog-enshrouded Gotham, and he underwent a myectomy shortly thereafter. According to a backstretch report at Saratoga, Saratoga Russell then went to Kentucky for treatment of some other maladies, and I was told that his trip to Kentucky was a…
If you’re a fan of Richard Migliore, there’s no dearth of recent news out there about him. He was interviewed by Jan Rushton a couple of weeks ago on Thoroughbred Weekly; Keith at Triple Dead Heat talked to him at Aqueduct just before Thanksgiving, and this week, NYRA has yet another interview with him, this…
Brooklyn Backstretch 