Saturday was quiet at Aqueduct. Though warm, it was moist everywhere; even when it wasn’t raining, it was hard not feel sodden. And I was inside for most of the time; the jockeys, grooms, and horses must have felt like it was time to develop webbed feet. Two races offered the sort of finish that…

The, ahem, rigors of the last few weeks have finally caught up with me: having traveled to Lexington and Saratoga since the beginning of the month, and with the Rangers’ season and its attendant obligations having begun, I had no choice but to stay home today, firmly rooted to my couch, and attack the pile…

Arrived in Lexington just late enough to miss the last race; as I entered Keeneland, hordes were exiting, but still, it was rather nice to witness the place in quiet, golden, late afternoon/early evening sunshine… Drove today from just north of Baltimore to Lexington, with an extended, simultaneously frustrating and gratifying pit stop at Charles…

Updated: This post appears today on website of The Blood-Horse, in the new Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance “stall” in the Blood-Horse blog stable, and I intended to post a link to the Blood-Horse site, rather than put the piece in both places. The article that I sent to be published was originally formatted in such a…

Just a couple of thoughts before heading to Saratoga for the weekend; the Oklahoma is still open, so I’m hoping to head over there for autumn workouts, which are just as wonderful as summer workouts. I did read recently, though, that repairs on the Oklahoma drainage systems had led to all of the horses being…

I was recently musing about whether there might be some life-sustaining, mortgage-paying way to combine racing and education; while many companies employ educators and establish education programs about their work, my sense has been that most of them don’t pay a lot and don’t provide the same sort of perks (read: vacations) that my current…

Keeping good company, in Meatpacking District destination Pastis… …and courtesy of T.D. Thornton, of Suffolk Downs and Not by a Longshot: A Season at a Hard-Luck Horse Track, from Garrison Savannah Racetrack in Barbados…

A recent conversation at Railbird has attracted a number of contributors weighing in on what racing needs to do to market itself. Given the upcoming NTRA marketing summit in which a number of internet racing writers will participate (including Jessica at the aforementioned Railbird, Dana at Green but Game, Patrick at Handride, and Kevin at…

In an attempt to re-create the magic moments of a Saratoga summer morning, I headed to Belmont early on Saturday to watch workouts and wander the backstretch. I got there around 8 am, grabbed coffee at the Belmont café on the ground floor of the clubhouse (walking around without a cup of coffee feels like…

So Roger Federer won his fifth straight US Open title yesterday. It’s a shame that not many of us got to see his dominating win, and we can blame CBS at least in part for that, for refusing to have both men’s semi-finals begin early on Saturday, before the rain moved in. Had they done…