“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…
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 