As Diversify rounded the final sweeping turn at Belmont Park in Saturday’s $750,000 Jockey Club Gold Cup (G1), Rodney Paine, perched on a platform above the finish line, started yelling. “Come on, Big D!” he exhorted. “Dig in! Dig in, Big D!” And dig in did the four-year-old son of Bellamy Road. Having led largely…
Saturday saw the final two major prep races for the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic: the Awesome Again was run at Santa Anita Park in southern California, the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park in New York. Both are “Win and You’re In” races, guaranteeing a berth in the Classic, along with paid fees…
On Saturday morning, the Belmont Child Care Association will host a Pumpkin Patch breakfast from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. We hope old and new friends will join us to see Anna House in action, busy with the activities of the children, who range from six weeks to 5 years old. In the afternoon, we’ll be…
When T. Paul Bulmahn was a little boy, his mother offered him an incentive for doing a good job with his family’s sharecropping chores on an Indiana farm. If he raked and hoed and planted well, she said, he could climb over the fence and hang out with the draft horses next door. “I loved…
“More than any other racing country, America has had its share of great geldings…” claimed William H.P. Robertson in 1964. And Kelso, he said, was “the most successful gelding of all.” It’s nearly impossible to think about the Jockey Club Gold Cup without thinking about Kelso, the horse who won the race five times, all…
I watched the Jockey Club Gold Cup from the winner’s circle at Belmont Park on Saturday. It’s an ideal spot for about five seconds, the last five seconds of the race. The race started on the clubhouse turn, so most of us had to rely on the infield screen to see what was happening. I…
Is it just me, or do the skies have an unerring tendency to open up just before a big stakes race? The first raindrops on Saturday fell with about 15 minutes to post before the Beldame. It rained off and on through the late afternoon, actually ceasing for a bit at times, but just as…
“A wall of horses before the favorite…English Channel will have to try to squeeze through on the inside…oh, it’s so tight! English Channel has just muscled his way to victory…” Standing on the rail just before the winner’s circle, I couldn’t believe my eyes…or my ears. What a call by Durkin (read the wrong way,…
What a great, great day to be at the races. There was a nice crowd, though the announced attendance of 19,000 included those who showed up for the folding chair giveaway and then left; shockingly, I saw spinners for the first time at Belmont: people going through the turnstile multiple times to get multiple chairs.…
Brooklyn Backstretch 