by Brian Nadeau of Horseplayer Now and Capital OTB TV. Aqueduct: The GIII, $400,000 Gotham at 1 1/16 miles (Kentucky Derby qualifying points: 50-20-10-5) #1 Laoban (15-1): The most well-traveled maiden in the country was scratched out of the GII Risen Star at Fair Grounds a few weeks back and now ends up in South Ozone Park in…
When Robert Barbara was a 10-year-old growing up in Canarsie, N.Y., a Brooklyn neighborhood that borders Jamaica Bay, his teenaged brother bought a horse to ride at a nearby stable in Mill Basin. Before long, it was the younger brother who had taken his place in the saddle. His talent evident, Barbara was soon competing…
Neither a champion nor a Hall of Fame inductee, Busanda nonetheless lives on in two ways: through her bloodlines and one of those Aqueduct winter races that, when I first started following races, sent me to the archives to figure out who those eponymous horses were. I don’t know whose idea it was to name a…
On the day that the Holy Bull Stakes was run at Gulfstream Park, a son of that 1994 Horse of the Year added to his Kentucky Derby points total with a win in the Grade III Withers at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, New York. Sunny Ridge earned 10 Derby points with his Withers win, adding…
“Originally this race was run over the memorable six-furlong straight course at Morris Park, then the newest and most elaborate of Metropolitan racing plants—which was a bit down grade and for that reason nicknamed the “toboggan slide”. (sic) (Hervey) As racing historian John Hervey notes above, the name of the Toboggan has nothing to do…
“No man in the country was more widely esteemed by racing men.” David Dunham Withers was born in 1822 in New York City; he and his family lived downtown on Greene Street, now in fashionable Soho. When his parents married, the couple was given a cottage by the bride’s father as a wedding present. According…
Aqueduct: The GIII, $250,000 Withers at 1 1/16 miles (Kentucky Derby qualifying points: 10-4-2-1) #1 Donegal Moon (15-1): It’s rare you get a longshot from Pletcher in a 3yo graded stakes, but this son of Malibu Moon certainly fits the bill, as he was well-beaten by today’s favorite Flexibility in the GII Remsen to end…
The new year is so far indeed a happy one for 5-year-old Saythreehailmary’s and her connections. On Jan. 10 at Aqueduct Racetrack, the dark bay mare picked up where she left off in 2015, winning her second consecutive stakes race and first in open company when she took the Ladies Handicap by 1 3/4 lengths. On Dec.…
“Originally this race was run over the memorable six-furlong straight course at Morris Park, then the newest and most elaborate of Metropolitan racing plants—which was a bit down grade and for that reason nicknamed the “toboggan slide”. (sic) (Hervey) As racing historian John Hervey notes above, the name of the Toboggan has nothing to do…
On this weekend when a team that plays in New Jersey will be nominally representing New York in the Super Bowl, it seems only fitting that a race named for a man whose racing life was based in the Garden State will be run at Aqueduct. Like the New York Giants, David Withers got his…
Brooklyn Backstretch 