On May 8, 1907, August Belmont gave a dance and cotillion in the Turf and Field Club at Belmont Park prior to that season’s racing. Supper was served at midnight; trains to bring guests home departed at 3 a.m. Belmont’s guests, I think it’s safe to say, enjoyed themselves, entertained as they were by a…
OK, nine days until Christmas. Eight shopping days. I hope, for your sake, that you’re a little further along in your holiday shopping than I am. But in case you’re not, and still in search of the perfect gift for the racing lover in your life, here are a few items you can pick up…
There are a lot of movies out there about high school. Dead Poets’ Society. Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Election. Clueless. Some I like, some I don’t. In some, I see situations and students that look familiar; in most, what’s on the screen looks nothing like what I see in the classrooms and hallways in…
Last week the American Graded Stakes Committee announced its 2012 graded stakes races. Among the noteworthy changes was the downgrading of the historical Hopeful Stakes from a Grade 1 to a Grade 2. In decrying the downgrading, commentators invoked the race’s history – the Hopeful was first run in 1904 – and the post-Hopeful performances…
Last summer at Saratoga, a turf writing veteran – male – called me over to a TV in the press box. “Have you seen this?” he asked. Seen what? He gestured to the television, rendered practically speechless by what he was seeing. And in the comments below, reader Walt steered me to a Calder collection…
I think I went to my first hockey game before I went to my first horse race. I think my father took me to Madison Square Garden to see the Rangers when I was four years old; I remember being at Saratoga Harness with my parents and my brother when I was six. It’s possible…
A humdrum Saturday at Aqueduct became a moment in history when former jockey Robbie Davis won his first race as a trainer with Sandyinthesun, who took the seventh race by a nose at odds of 39-1. Davis won the Jockey Club Gold Cup aboard Allen Jerkens’ Wagon Limit; he won the 1995 Sanford, Futurity, and…
They are little boys with big dreams. So little that the pitchforks they wield in pre-dawn darkness are bigger than they are; so little that they can barely push the wheelbarrows loaded with manure from the stalls they’ve mucked; so little that when they get off a horse, they are asked whether the tack is…
Sometimes the second fiddle gets to play in the first chair. Alydar finally beat Affirmed (albeit through disqualification) in the Travers; Easy Goer vanquished his nemesis Sunday Silence in the Belmont. Though often on the losing end of the rivalry, both Alydar and Easy Goer have, over the years, garnered nearly as much ink as…
Over the next few weeks, this space will be filled with holiday spirit: racetrack initiatives offering ways to help; retirement and rescue organizations doing fund-raisers; suggestions for gifts for the racing lover in your life. Last week we kicked off with the annual Belmont Child Care Association holiday party; I spent my Black Friday shopping…
Brooklyn Backstretch 