Opening weekend at Saratoga Race Course was an exercise in cognitive dissonance. No one lined up outside the gates pre-dawn, waiting to get in and snag their preferred picnic table. No one watched morning workouts. No one joined track announcer John Imbriale in the kick-off toast, “They’re off at Saratoga!” The prestigious Sanford Stakes (G3)…
“There’s this nice boy next door,” trainer Paul Kelley remembers his mother-in-law, Mary Beninati, telling him a little more than 20 years ago. “He loves the horses. Can’t you give him a job?” Beninati lived in Mechanicville, New York, next door to Jerry and Patti Brown and their horse-crazy son, Chad, who’d grown up going…
For a man whose volubility makes him a terrific interview, Jay Hanley was curiously silent as he stood near the winner’s circle at Belmont Park on Saturday afternoon. Minutes earlier, his Lady Eli had won the Grade 1, $500,000 Flower Bowl, her second race and first win since she was injured after the Grade 1 Belmont…
The final first of Saratoga 2016 was not one that we looked forward to. This summer, we celebrated pinhooker Andrew Motion’s first Saratoga yearling sale, and trainer Ray Handal’s first Saratoga win, and trainer Lacey Gaudet’s first Saratoga starter. And then we waited. Not for a first, but for a next, to see if trainer…
When Jay Hanley met Sol Kumin at a cocktail party on Nantucket several years ago, the talk quickly turned to horse racing, the former having grown up going to the track, the latter knowing nothing about it. Intrigued, Kumin proposed creating a partnership to buy some horses, an idea about which Hanley was enthusiastic, with…
Brooklyn Backstretch 