Monday at Aqueduct, before the fifth race: A journalism student, covering the Big A for a school assignment, looking bored and utterly uninterested in the goings-on below, asks a veteran turf writer: “So what are you writing about today?” Turf Writer explains that he’s likely going to be focusing on out-of-town racing, given the stakes…
In news that is only tangentially related to racing, I noticed this item in Filip Bondy’s column in the New York Daily News: Shahar Peer was supposed to play a first-round match Sunday in Dubai against Anna Chakvetadze, but that isn’t going to happen now. The Israeli tennis player wasn’t granted an entry visa by…
Preview of the Southwest Stakes – Grade III, $250,000 – Oaklawn Park – 1 Mileby Brian Nadeau Well, the Kentucky Derby Trail really gets going here, as we see the return of Old Fashioned, who many view as the horse to beat (is there such a thing three months out?) as of now. He meets…
Preview of the San Vicente Stakes – Santa Anita Park – Grade II, $150,000 – 7 FurlongsBy Brian Nadeau Well, we might as well get this out of the way early. I really have no feel for the fake stuff in terms of handicapping and I’m not a fan of it in the least overall.…
Guest analysis by Brian Nadeau: The Sam F. Davis Stakes – Tampa Bay Downs – Grade III, $225,000 – 1 1/16 miles Question: What do Bluegrass Cat and Any Given Saturday have in common? Answer: The obvious is that they were both Grade I-winning 3-year-olds trained by Todd Pletcher who were major players on the…
Yeah, yeah, I know that I “sent” this card last year…but that’s just a mark of my fidelity, and it’s just too good to sit in a drawer…Happy Valentine’s day, everyone!
The racing gods work in mysterious ways. Just a couple of weeks ago, I felt compelled to confess publically my lack of Derby interest, and as the Road to the Roses game has begun, and the Derby preps are coming more frequently, and the racing press is dominated by news of three year old colts,…
In a lovely bit of romantic whimsy, NYRA has scheduled the Dearly Precious for Valentine’s Day this year. Though the bay filly has a pedigree that suggests romance (out of Imsodear), it was her performance on the racetrack that really set hearts racing. En route to being named champion two year old filly of 1975,…
My picks are made, my league is created—now it’s your turn to join. We’re kicking off the second annual Derby picks for charity contest at Brooklyn Backstretch. Join the Brooklyn Backstretch league in the Road to the Roses, and the winner will have a minimum $50 donation made in her name to the racing charity…
It’s a poorly-kept secret that reality television is in fact only partially that—situations and conflicts are contrived to create maximum drama and ultimate titillation, to make viewers return to see where the ugliness ends. It was something of a relief, then, that the first two episodes of Jockeys were not characterized by the manufactured antagonisms…
Brooklyn Backstretch 