“He alone made it what it is today.” So began a 1949 New York Times article by Arthur Daley on the passing of Matt Winn. The article was called “The Passing of a Legend,” and what he “made” is the Kentucky Derby. Matt Winn, a racing impresario if ever there was one, worked at a dozen or…
The last time a Calumet horse won the Kentucky Derby, Bobby Goldsboro had the #1 song in the country, the National Hockey League had just expanded from six teams to twelve, and a gallon of gas cost about 35 cents. The year was 1968, and the horse was Forward Pass, the last of eight Calumet horses to win America’s…
December is, some would say, much too early to start thinking about the Kentucky Derby. Not Sally Faith Steinmann. Her Kentucky Derby musings begin long before the final 2-year-old stakes races of the year, long before the Breeders’ Cup. In fact, she’s thinking Derby before Saratoga and Del Mar have even ended their summer meets.…
We in the United States aren’t the only ones looking forward to the first leg of a Triple Crown this weekend. On Saturday at Newmarket, the 2,000 Guineas will be run at the distance of one mile, kicking off Britain’s Triple Crown season. The other two legs are the Epsom Derby, at Epsom Downs on…
It feels both fitting and exhausting that the school year comes to an end just as the Triple Crown does. I’m sitting today in my last full day of end-of-year meetings; yesterday, I published my final post at BelmontStakes.com; early Sunday afternoon, I filed my last Triple Crown race story for Thoroughbred Times. Since late…
Not long after the Kentucky Derby, I was putting together a post about jockey John Velazquez, and, in search of embeddable video of the race, I went to YouTube, expecting to find an official version made available by NBC, by Churchill Downs, or by the NTRA. In some ways, I’ve gotten spoiled: the NTRA, Breeders’…
The last of the straw was still being swept from the stalls that Breeders’ Cup starters had recently inhabited. The buzz from that Classic finish had barely subsided. The 2010 racing calendar listed a number of stakes races that had yet to be run. But it had started. It had started on blogs, in columns,…
Well, by now we all know what happened in Saturday’s 135th Kentucky Derby. Or at least we all know what we saw. I think it’s fair to ask if we’ll ever know what really happened on Saturday. To briefly recap, the unheralded Mine That Bird took the racing world and 18 of the best 3-year-olds…
OK, OK, I give in! I’ve still got some pretty big reservations about this year’s Derby, but thanks to the thoughtful and persuasive comments on Sunday’s post, I agree that maybe I should re-consider my initial visceral reaction. I was impressed by the level of discourse and the thoughtfulness of (most of) the comments, so…
Well, it’s over: the Kentucky Derby is behind us, and with it, the 2009 Road to the Roses Brooklyn Backstretch charity contest. Congratulations to Sleipnir Stables, who kept her lead over the last few weeks. Please let us know where you’d like the money donated. A total of $200 has been donated so far, and…
Brooklyn Backstretch 