On March 4, Jillian Tullock walked into Laurel Park to begin work as the racing secretary for the Maryland Jockey Club. She oversaw exactly six days of racing before Covid-19 led to the suspension of racing in Maryland, a suspension that is ongoing, much to the frustration of the state’s racing community. “It’s mind-boggling to…
We weren’t supposed to be devoting so many words to Marylou Whitney just yet. Sure, she is always present, somehow, when racing season starts, but it’s on Whitney weekend, this year August 3, that we focus on her life and her contributions to Thoroughbred racing and to Saratoga Springs. Instead, racegoers at Saratoga Race Course…
When I talked to Donna Brothers before this year’s Kentucky Derby, she was well into her preparation for the big race. She has a lifetime’s experience on horseback, she knows the racing industry as well as anyone, and she’s been conducting interviews on horseback during national telecasts for nearly two decades. While certainly not blasé…
Sabrina Moore didn’t grow up in the horse business. No one in her family was involved, either. But when she was nine, Moore got her first horse, and thus began the 15-year process of her, and her mother’s, pretty much complete immersion in the industry. When Moore’s mother Angie was a little girl, she’d look…
On Thursday, August 10, as the New York Racing Association’s Talking Horses television show began, two women sat behind the desk, ready to handicap that day’s Saratoga card for the thousands on-track and watching on television and the internet. That in itself was noteworthy, given the paucity of women on the NYRA broadcast until recently.…
On the morning of July 27, Keri Brion sat on a golf cart on Saratoga’s backstretch and glumly watched torrents of rain soak the turf course. She was scheduled in a few hours to ride her first race at Saratoga, in the Grade 1, $150,000 A.P. Smithwick, no less, but with incessant rain forecast for…
They are of different generations. They train at different racetracks. One was born into the business, the other came to it late, in the face of family resistance. But their lives have been linked for decades, and last year, trainers Mary Eppler and Lacey Gaudet both found themselves in a place relatively new to them:…
Last weekend’s Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita was a triumph of sport and spectacle. The Distaff was a nail-biter between fan favorites Beholder and Songbird; the Saturday races offered storylines and close finishes, with both Tepin and Lady Eli in action, along with a headlining showdown between California Chrome and Arrogate. The spectacular backdrop of…
She’s as closely associated with Churchill Downs as the twin spires, but though she’s been a proud resident of the bluegrass for decades, Jill Byrne is a product of Virginia, her childhood spent at one of the Mid-Atlantic’s premier racing facilities, the pedigree of which might even challenge that of the historic track in Louisville…
In the summer of 2003, Dr. Patricia Hogan treated a chestnut 2-year-old who had arrived at her New Jersey clinic with his head practically smashed in. Yet to make his first start, the colt was trying to earn his gate card when he instead crashed into the starting gate, badly injuring his eye and the…
Brooklyn Backstretch 