The Blood-Horse recently reported that a $40,000 grant from the Alfred Z. Solomon Trust will make it possible for Backstretch Employees Service Team (BEST), based at Belmont, to offer dental care to backstretch workers at Saratoga this summer. While BEST has for the past three years provided medical care, this is the first time that…
Poor old Evening Attire—Saturday just wasn’t his day. The Stymie set up as I’d hoped it would, with a speed duel immediately on the front end, but when Jose Espinoza asked for some run from Evening Attire, he didn’t have any, and he came home last in a field of four. Not, unfortunately, his finest…
A year ago on this day, I was getting ready to head to the Meadowlands; my sister-in-law was planning a surprise 40th birthday for my brother, and I was meeting some of his friends there in the afternoon for some simulcasting before the big event. Evening Attire was in action that day, in his second…
I think that I’m already a reasonably humble person, but in case I needed any ego-beating, Take Ten! is taking care of it. What a great idea I had, to publish weekly the standings in our mini-league, to track our progress on our way to a donation to the racing charity of the winner’s choice.…
Save the date! The Belmont Child Care Association has announced the details of its spring fundraiser, the Rags to Riches Belmont Bash. This charity casino night will offer the “chance to eclipse Todd Pletcher in earnings and out-race John Velazquez,” to benefit two great charities: the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation, “committed to the advancement of…
Today’s feature at Aqueduct is the Busher, for three-year-old fillies at a mile and a sixteenth. Run for the first time in 1978, the race is named for the filly who was the Horse of the Year in 1945. She’s depicted here in a painting by J.N. Slick, from the National Museum of Racing collection.…
Nice day for good-guy Mike Luzzi at the Big A today; he brought home three winners: a favorite, a $13.80 winner, and a $26.00 longshot. And in other good news for New York jockeys, Richard Migliore is the recipient of this year’s George Woolf Memorial Award. I don’t care where the Mig is riding, and…
It’s a big week in the world of synthetic surfaces. On Wednesday, a group of owners, trainers, jockeys, and executives gathered in California to discuss the topic, with, predictably, a variety of opinions being expressed. Some trainers love it; some trainers hate it. Some trainers are sure injuries are down; some trainers see more injuries.…
Ed Fountaine in the NY Post reports that trainer Sid Watters died in Maryland last week. Watters, age 90, trained champions Slew o’ Gold and Hoist the Flag, whom I profiled at the end of January. The story of Hoist the Flag, which must have garnered a relatively similar amount of press coverage as the…
I wish I could say that I have come out of week two of the ST Publishing Take Ten Derby game unscathed, but I cannot: predictably, my Pyro-less stable plummeted. That’s what I get for being a non-conformist. We’ve got seven stables in our little intramural competition; many have kicked in to add to my…
Brooklyn Backstretch 