We know that we’re supposed to remember, always, that horse racing is a business. That even though we’re animal lovers, horses aren’t pets. That, as much as we cringe to read it, or to write it, they are property. That truth is hammered home nowhere more clearly than the sales ring, when a literal price…
Gulfstream Park: The Grade II, $400,000 Fountain of Youth at 1 1/16 miles–by Brian Nadeau of Horseplayer Now #1 Commissioner: The first of two from Pletcher was a game winner of an optional claimer over fellow heavyweight Top Billing here in January in what was his first start since August. Son of A.P. Indy is…
Fair Grounds: The Grade II, $400,000 Risen Star at 1 1/16 miles, by Brian Nadeau of Horseplayer Now. #1 Albano: Lightly raced son of Istan is a half-brother to Mark Valeski, who was second in this race for the Jones and Jones combo a few years back, so he’s bred to be a nice one,…
At first I thought—hoped—that it was an article from the Onion. But no—it was from the Associated Press. “Barbie To Feature In This Year’s SI Swimsuit Issue.” For real? For real. If anything having to do with a plastic doll posing in a swimsuit could be considered “real.” The publication of this year’s swimsuit issue…
Welcome to year six of the Brooklyn Backstretch Kentucky Derby charity game. We started in 2009, piggybacking on the Saratoga Special Derby fantasy league, and from 2010 to 2013, we used the Road to the Roses as the base for our league play. This year, handicapper and writer Mike Dorr (@mikdorr77), who writes about racing…
It was in 2008 that I first made the historical acquaintance of Hollie Hughes, a man who devoted himself to and made a life in horse racing, a man as closely linked to one of racing’s first families as anyone could be. In 2008, I wrote of Hughes and of Sanford Farm, the place where he…
Oaklawn Park: The Grade III, $300,000 Southwest at 1 1/16 miles— by Brian Nadeau of HorsePlayer Now. #2 Tapiture: Improving colt has always been held in high regard by Asmussen and broke his maiden when last seen in Churchill Downs’ GII Kentucky Jockey Club in November, which is no easy task for a juvenile. Of…
Golden Gate Fields: The Grade III, $200,000 El Camino Real Derby at 1 1/8 miles— by Brian Nadeau, Horseplayer Now #1 Craftsman (IRE): Very intriguing Irish-bred most definitely needed his US debut in December when he was a flat fifth going a mile in Santa Anita’s grassy Eddie Logan in his first start for Callaghan.…
A quick glance at the cast page for Horseplayers reveals that the lead characters don’t offer much in the way of diversity: six characters, six men, all white. The target audience for the Esquire Network, on which the shows airs, is males in their late 20s to their early 40s, according to Tina Gazzero Clapp, president of GoGoLuckey, which…
“The second richest day in North American racing” will come to Belmont Park on June 7. That’s what the New York Racing Association (NYRA, and an occasional freelance client of mine) announced last week, in a reconfiguration of its springs/summer stakes schedule designed to create a blockbuster race card on the day of the Belmont…
Brooklyn Backstretch 