The reorganization board of the New York Racing Association met for the first time a year ago, but it wasn’t until its eighth meeting Dec. 4 that its members offered any significant disagreement to a proposal made by board chairman David Skorton. On the agenda was NYRA’s 2014 budget, one of the most contentious elements…
Last Friday afternoon, as I was out shopping for the Belmont Child Care Association’s holiday party, this landed in my inbox: “If you know who is responsible for the NYRA/NYS Gaming Commission’s equine injury and death database, could you please alert them to this entry for 11/20/2013. Something seems amiss.” Amiss, indeed. Over the weekend, the…
Mainstream media’s attention to horse-racing ended with the Breeders’ Cup earlier this month, but Thoroughbred racing—and important Thoroughbred racing—continues this weekend, with significant races with championship implications happen today and tomorrow at Churchill Downs and Aqueduct respectively. While the value of an Eclipse Award is debatable, the honor is nonetheless coveted by owners and breeders,…
During his playing days, it was hard to find someone with an unkind thing to say about Marty Biron. His quick sense of humor and affable naure made him a favorite with both fans and teammates, and his retirement announcement earlier this month elicited kudos from fans, and predictions from hockey professionals, including Toronto Sun…
Earlier this year, on a cold January morning on the backstretch at Laurel, exercise rider Chelsey Keiser asked agent Kevin Witte the best time to try to start a career as a jockey. She’d been told, she said, to start in January, to leave herself as much time as possible to get wins, in the…
Aqueduct Racetrack in South Ozone Park, Queens is the last racetrack in New York City. Across the Belt Parkway from Kennedy Airport, it has its own stop on the subway, and virtually from the day of its opening 1894, it has been disparaged, the down-market cousin of the upscale tracks that used to populate New…
On a November afternoon in 2006, I sat at my desk at school, taking a little break from the work of an 11th and 12th grade dean to check the weekday entries at Aqueduct. Maybe I was looking for cat horses; maybe I was trying to figure out which horse to play in the SHOWdown…
At Pimlico last month, more than 600 people attended a two-day exhibition produced by the Retired Racehorse Training Project. Dozens of retired Thoroughbreds performed in a variety of disciplines, showing off newly learned skills in hunting, jumping, polo, and even police work. The weekend provided an opportunity for retired Thoroughbreds to demonstrate their adaptability and usefulness…
For Howard Nolan Jr., Thoroughbred racing has been a nearly 70-year love affair, one that began in Saratoga in 1946 and was a case of love at first sight. “I was a fan from day one,” he said in June, not long after a horse that he bred, Readtheprospectus, had won his first stakes race,…
On Saturday afternoon at Santa Anita Park, Jim Rome did something few horse owners have accomplished: he won a Breeders’ Cup race for the second consecutive year. Two days later and 2,000 miles away, he sold the horse that did it for him, Mizdirection, for $2.7 million. Rome runs his horses in the name of…
Brooklyn Backstretch 