My Christmas wish list

A mix of the global and the local, in no particular order, and with an explicit belief in Christmas miracles… …for the glory of the old races—the Suburban, the Brooklyn, the Triple Tiara—to somehow return. …for Saratoga Russell to come back at four, and to be as fast and electric as he was before he…

Monday morning quick picks

Oh, how I miss Aqueduct! I can understand why folks think it would be good for New York racing to take a few months off in the winter, though the economic ramifications would, I think, be pretty significant at both the individual and municipal levels. But from a strictly personal standpoint: I have the rare…

Where we find our racing news

Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance colleague Patrick Patten at Handride reminded us once again this week that he’s not a big fan of Equidaily. He argued that it makes no sense for readers to rely on one site for racing news, and he pointed out that the site has included links to a variety of Thoroughbred Bloggers…

Still shopping?

You’ve been inundated with racing holiday gift suggestions: last week I talked about movies: Lost in the Fog by John Corey, who offers Brooklyn Backstretch readers a discount (here’s what I wrote about the movie when I saw it last August); and The First Saturday in May, about the road to the 2006 Derby by…

Christmas comes early at Anna House

On Saturday afternoon, the Belmont Child Care Association held its seventh annual holiday party for the children of Anna House. Scheduled to begin at 1 pm, the party started a little early to accommodate the hundreds of children and families lined up, so that the children could choose gifts to give to their family members.…

Fans and gamblers

Last September I wrote a post about ways to market to fans and get them to bet; I suggested then that it might be worthwhile to figure about how much tracks would like fans/visitors to bet per visit, and create marketing strategies/programs designed to meet the goal. I also wrote then that racing is in…

Ladies Handicap, #137

There was no storybook ending to the Ladies Handicap on Sunday afternoon. Sweet Goodbye, the choice of those poetically inclined, finished last, providing no historically appropriate ending to this race, the last of which I can only hope that we have not seen. One horse’s misfortune, though, is another’s glory, and even the most sentimentally-inclined…

Journalists at work

The holiday break couldn’t have come at a better time for NYRA or New York racing fans, given the events at Aqueduct on Sunday. In the fifth race, Routine Addendum went down at the top of the stretch. Did he clip heels? Did he break down? Various perspectives offered various answers. As the jockey Sheldon…

Do-over

When my students and I discuss literature, we talk a lot about authorial intent: How do we find out what it is? Does it matter? Is it meaningful/significant if we find meaning/significance in something that the author didn’t intend, or even rejects? Mostly, I tell them to rely on the words of the page, to…