Labor Day is Backstretch family day at Saratoga; members of the extended clan head to the track, armed with coolers and sandwiches and cans of beer, to spend closing day at the races, unencumbered by any obligations other than those of betting, eating, drinking, and enjoying. The day starts at 7:00 a.m., when the table…
Seth Merrow of Capitol OTB’s Call to the Post and the website Equidaily has invited me to join him and co-host Jeff Carle on their final show of the Saratoga ’09 racing season. Broadcasting from the backstretch, the show starts at 10:30, and I should be on shortly thereafter to do a meet wrap-up and…
Sunday morning on the Saratoga backstretch was quiet. Yesterday’s heroics in the books, the feeling of the end of the meet is undeniable, and many, it seems have packed up and left: the sparse crowd at the backstretch coffee stand mirrors the empty stalls across the grounds. It’s cold, too, perhaps the coldest morning the…
It is the morning of which Saratoga dreams are made, and the racing gods ensure that everything’s perfect.At 6:30 am, the sun is peeking over the trees, but bathing the track and the horses working out over it in golden light. The morning fog without which no Saratoga photograph is complete shows up on schedule,…
Race 9: The Grade I, $300,000 Forego for 3&up at 7 furlongs.1. Pyro: Made a nice return earlier in the meet when his patented late rally fell just short in a minor stakes. Eligible to be much tighter today as well and that means he’s someone you need to be aware of in the lane.…
A couple of days ago, this came across the old Twitter wire from o_crunk: Never did sign up for Bris. Now they’re offering free .pdf charts all the wayback to 1991. Mr/Mrs Pls tear down this USER/PASS wall. Free charts? For almost 20 years? Too good to be true. Can’t be true. What’s the catch?…
And so it begins: the final week. 30 days of racing done, 6 to go. A look back at week 5… On Friday, Naughty New Yorker made his second start of the meet in the Funny Cide Stakes for New York-breds; he had turned in three dismal performances in a row, including a last-place finish…
On Wednesday, August 26th, the Belmont Child Care Association held its annual benefit in Saratoga at the Gideon Putnam, and as usual, the racing community turned out in full force to support the work of Anna House. The event was completely sold out, and approximately $300,000 was raised through live and silent auctions, raffles, and…
As good as Sara Louise and Music Note were in the Victory Ride and the Ballerina respectively, they might have been overshadowed by Vineyard Haven in the King’s Bishop even if he hadn’t been disqualified from first to second. Vineyard Haven, who went off at similar odds as Music Note and as the co-fourth choice…
The sun is shining on Saratoga today, 24 hours too late to make Travers Day 2009 an unqualified success. Though Saturday brought neither the fury of the Birdstone storm nor the inexorability of 2002’s rain, the promise of day-long precipitation suppressed both handle and attendance. The weather turned out to be not quite as bad…
Brooklyn Backstretch 