The holiday break couldn’t have come at a better time for NYRA or New York racing fans, given the events at Aqueduct on Sunday. In the fifth race, Routine Addendum went down at the top of the stretch. Did he clip heels? Did he break down? Various perspectives offered various answers. As the jockey Sheldon…

A friend recently told me about a local numbers game in Washington Heights, the neighborhood in northern Manhattan in which he grew up. As a kid, he worked at one of the local bodegas, and folks from the neighborhood would come in daily to lay down a few dollars on that day’s numbers. The winning…

Three horses break down at Aqueduct over the last week, but over two tracks—what does that mean? RIP, Megadiva; Yes She’s a Lady appeared to be OK after unseating Rajiv Maragh in the collision; both he and Winston Thompson were uninjured. Decided in the paddock: put a great sports bar at the Big A. Good…

Visitors to Aqueduct were greeted with this winter wonderland… …and Marines collecting donations for Toys for Tots. (But no menorah?) Snow on the Belmont backstretch this morning… …and around the turf course, rails splintered and on the ground, like so many discarded white matchsticks, waiting to be re-assembled in three months. Five Nine more New…

Thus was my writing characterized recently by a succinct, eloquent, and of course anonymous commenter. Maudlin crap? Maudlin: Etymology: alteration of Mary Magdalene; from her depiction as a weepingpenitentDate: 15091 : drunk enough to be emotionally silly Oh, dear: “drunk enough to be emotionally silly”? That commenter might be on to something… Crap: 1a usually…

A year ago, I offered thanks for the racing gifts of 2007. It was the year of Street Sense, Curlin, and Hard Spun, and of Rags to Riches; a year of writing about racing and reading about racing and friends made at the racetrack. In some ways, 2007 was a more memorable racing year than…

Reader, commenter, and self-proclaimed #1 Curlin fan Libby will be heading to Churchill this weekend to bid farewell to her favorite, and she’s soliciting tributes to the big chestnut. Libby will compile them and present them to Curlin’s connections this weekend, so if you’re interested in contributing, please contact her at libbybar@gmail.com. One final word…

I rarely watch television on Sunday morning, but early yesterday I had the TV on to the local NBC channel, and my attention was caught when I saw the meteorologist broadcasting live from the Meadowlands. In addition to giving the weather report, she was touting a food drive being conducted by the Meadowlands in conjunction…

A photo of Discovery’s grave, on the day of his eponymous race, thanks to reader Joan, who sent it in after reading yesterday’s post. She recently visited Sagamore Farm, home of Discovery and the base of Alfred G. Vanderbilt’s racing and breeding operation. Both Jerry Bossert in the Daily News and Ed Fountaine in the…

Lots of talk lately about the possibility of a revised racing schedule in New York; as Jessica Chapel recently pointed out, Jeremy Plonk proposes a year-round, nationwide schedule, and Paul Moran recently speculated that NYRA is mulling a winter hiatus from racing. Haven’t seen anything to suggest that such changes are actually in the offing,…