Open on Monday for the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday, Aqueduct will run the Jimmy Winkfield, named for the last black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. Formerly the Best Turn Stakes, the race was named in honor of Winkfield in 2005. On the NPR site, these photos are credited to Churchill Downs/ Kinetic. Jimmy…
Saturday was the first day that I’ve ever spent on my own at Aqueduct, and I’m not entirely sure that it’s an experience I’d like to repeat, though I did seem to make a lot of friends. I’ve been to lots of other tracks on my own—Gulfstream, Saratoga, Belmont, Tampa Bay Downs—but all of them…
Well, he almost got there. As most people surmised this week, a mile and a sixteenth just wasn’t long enough for a ten-year-old gelding; he wants to run longer, and while Angliana was impressive in running down Judiths Wild Rush, it sure looked as though Evening Attire might have caught him if the wire hadn’t…
Nice day for Kiaran McLaughlin at the Big A on Friday: he had three winners and swept the early double with Labadeel and Cadet Blue. He also took the finale with Hatta Diamond. Three owners, three jocks (Garcia, Maragh, Dominguez). Anyone paying attention to racing knows that today’s feature at Aqueduct is the eponymously named…
Welcome to the new look of Brooklyn Backstretch. This html-challenged blogger prevailed upon the good services of Patrick at Handride, who obligingly configured the new three-column format, thereby enabling me to display more prominently several elements of the blog. I love it; thank you, Patrick. I decided to play with colors and fonts once the…
It’s nice when the good folks at the various racing publications serve up material that’s too good not to share. How pleasant to click open this evening’s electronic Daily Racing Form to see an article in which Pat Kelly, trainer of Evening Attire, discusses the top ten moments in the grey gelding’s career. Evening Attire…
Every once in a while I get the urge to clean up my DRF watch list, about as often as I get the urge to clean out my closets or put away the stack of filing on my filing cabinet. And I act on the urge about as often as I file: the current stack…
Lyrical Ballad bookshop, on Phila Street in Saratoga, is one of the town’s most priceless jewels. It’s been there for thirty years, an independent bookshop on a little side street, with new but mostly used books: so many books, in so many rooms, that I really got lost there last summer, and sometimes I think…
As noted by Superfecta, Einstein returned to the races on Friday, ending an eight-month layoff caused by an injury in the Dixie Handicap on the Preakness undercard. In an ugly incident, Mending Fences fatally broke down, and Einstein, right behind him, stumbled, throwing Robby Albarado, who came back a few races later to win the…
What’s up with Numaany? I haven’t read anything about him in a while, but in the last two days, I’ve gotten 60+ hits here from people searching for him. This site still comes up first in the list of his search results, so it doesn’t appear that he’s on one of the numerous Derby lists…
Brooklyn Backstretch 