With apologies to Thomas Wolfe, this year’s Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale of New York-bred yearlings proved that you can, indeed, go home again. Absent from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 2020 because of the coronavirus, the sale returned this year, recording gains in all metrics. Sellers of New York-bred horses last year were forced to set up…
A man never at a loss for words, master of ceremonies Tom Durkin kept it simple Aug. 6 as he opened the 2021 induction ceremony for the National Racing Museum Hall of Fame in the Fasig-Tipton sales pavilion in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. “All I can say is, ‘Welcome back.’” This year’s ceremony did double duty, honoring…
On a chilly afternoon in early March, Naughty New Yorker came home. After a van ride from Port Colborne, Ontario, where he had been standing at stud, to Old Friends at Cabin Creek in Greenfield Center, the 18-year-old millionaire was restless. He paced his stall. He looked longingly out the window at the horses nearby…
Chris Feifarek may have a penchant for the fantastical in literature, but when it comes to horse racing, he is nothing if not pragmatic. On Friday morning, July 30, he sat in a box at Saratoga Race Course. It wasn’t his first trip to the track in upstate New York, but he’d never run a…
For the first time in a few decades, trainers Rick Schosberg and Bobby Ribaudo are working side by side again. Stabled together on the Saratoga backstretch, the two have between them more than 70 years of training experience. They’ve worked alongside the greats of the sport, like Allen Jerkens, Woody Stephens, and Sid Watters, and…
On Saturday morning on the backstretch at Saratoga Race Course, July 24, Maddie Rowland held the shank as trainer Elizabeth Merryman bathed her filly Caravel. The gray/roan filly extended her neck straight up, turned her head in profile, and posed. “She knows when the camera is out,” said Rowland. “It’s like she’s saying, ‘I’m beautiful,…
He should have been a contender. Of course, maybe he still will be. Right up until the starting gate opened for the Sanford Stakes (G3) at Saratoga Race Course on July 17, Maryland Brando looked like he was in with a chance. Though making only his second start, he had won his debut impressively at…
It’s fair to say that in the grand scheme of racing, not many people knew of Dinosaur Ben. The Ontario-bred began his career at Woodbine, winless in his first three starts, finishing second shortly before the end of Woodbine’s 2020 season, and Ralph Santella was paying attention. “There are always horses for sale at the…
Opening Day Eve, an unofficial holiday observed by those for whom Christmas comes in July when Saratoga Race Course opens, lacked its usual excitement and anticipation last year. The pandemic was only four months old, masks were still required everywhere, travel was forbidden, and large gatherings of people, even outdoors, were a non-starter under state…
When Flavien Prat thanked “the pony girl” moments after winning the Preakness with Rombauer, he highlighted both the importance and the anonymity of the people whose very visible yet barely noticed work is an essential element of racetrack safety. On the principle that nervous Thoroughbreds, herd animals that they are, will relax more easily with a…
Brooklyn Backstretch 