With no Triple Crown on the line in this year’s Belmont Stakes, we don’t need to worry about rooting for history and we can focus on making money. The race isn’t called the test of the champion for nothing: the winner will have to have the stamina to run a mile and a half, longer…
Tomorrow at Belmont Park, graded stakes step aside to make way for a day of New York-bred racing. Seven stakes races offering combined purses of $850,000 will be headlined by the first running of the $150,000 Commentator, named in honor of the New York-bred who won the Whitney Handicap in 2005 and 2008. In 2003,…
Celebrity Chef Bobby Flay doesn’t have a horse running in this year’s Belmont Stakes, but next Thursday night, he’ll join his two passions—food and horse racing—to support two major racing charities. Each year, the Jockey Club, which is the breed registry for Thoroughbred racing, holds the official Belmont Stakes Charity Celebration, to be held this year…
…the owners of the race tracks in this vicinity are calling back the banished steeds of speed and bidding the admirers of the same to prepare for a Summer made joyous in the old way… —New York Times, March 1, 1913 Thoroughbred horse racing was back. It was May 30, 1913, when Belmont Park re-opened…
When Dan Silver got to Penn National last fall to serve as the track’s director of racing operations, one of the first things he did was to meet with racing secretary Dave Bailey and corporate vice-president of racing Chris McErlean. The three men looked at the national stakes schedule, trying to find a spot for…
If the only time you pay attention to horse racing is during the Triple Crown, you might think that going to the races is a fairly upmarket affair. Celebrity red-carpet entrances, features on famous horse owners, and segments on fashion, hats, and fancy cocktails are pretty much de rigeur in mainstream coverage and industry PR…
My first day at a Thoroughbred race track was August 27th, 1979: General Assembly’s Travers. My family had moved to Saratoga the summer before; my brother and I were barely teenagers. To Saratoga kids, the track was a social scene. What to do on an August afternoon? Go to the races. We knew that we’d see our friends there,…
“’We bid you welcome to our cabin by the sea.’” With these words, the Coney Island Jockey Club announced its existence in September, 1879. Headed by Leonard Jerome, the club was formed to build a new racetrack in Brooklyn; “the sea” was Sheepshead Bay, in the southwest corner of the borough, and the racetrack that…
At about 5:25 Saturday afternoon, Gary Stevens and Skyring gave Forbes 400’s Brad Kelley and his Calumet Farm their first Grade II victory when they won the Dixie Stakes at Pimlico Race Course; in the same race, Kelley’s 2012 Kentucky Derby runner Optimizer finished third, missing second place by just a head. “Skyring won the Dixie, and…
No shortage of racing memories have been made at the track they call Old Hilltop. That hill in the infield isn’t around anymore, but there are plenty of people at Pimlico this weekend whose memories of the track and the race go back decades, and who were happy to talk to us about their memorable…
Brooklyn Backstretch 