On a chilly afternoon in early March, Naughty New Yorker came home. After a van ride from Port Colborne, Ontario, where he had been standing at stud, to Old Friends at Cabin Creek in Greenfield Center, the 18-year-old millionaire was restless. He paced his stall. He looked longingly out the window at the horses nearby…
How do I love thee, New York Showcase Day? Let me count the ways! Tomorrow at Belmont Park is all about New York, on and off the track. And having spent all but 10 years of my life here, I am rather an unabashed cheerleader for all things Empire State. (OK, maybe not all things.…
Saturday’s feature at Aqueduct was the Rare Treat, named for the “hard hitting filly” owned by George D. Widener who raced in the 1950’s. For a horse with “rare” in her name, she sure hit the track a lot, running 101 times for a record of 16 victories, 20 seconds, and 14 thirds. Her eponymous…
New York Showcase Day at Belmont Park is as big a racing day for me as the Gold Cup, as the Travers, as the Wood. When the stakes schedule comes out, I mark my calendar: Showcase Day is a non-negotiable day at the races. As usual, NYRA’s got a slate of activities planned: handicappers can…
And so it begins: the final week. 30 days of racing done, 6 to go. A look back at week 5… On Friday, Naughty New Yorker made his second start of the meet in the Funny Cide Stakes for New York-breds; he had turned in three dismal performances in a row, including a last-place finish…
Good news for fans of New Yorkers Spooky Mulder and Naughty New Yorker. Though bred in Kentucky, Spooky Mulder’s spent a good deal of his racing life in New York. After being claimed by Scott Lake in February of 2007, Spooky moved to the Mid-Atlantic circuit, but David Jacobson claimed him in his last start,…
Slowing down as we age is distastefully inevitable–I wish that running fast and far was as easy today as it was ten years ago–and even if we do a pretty good job of denying it in ourselves, we find ourselves reminded of its truth when we are lucky enough to watch some of our favorites…
Last year’s Wood Memorial (Nobiz like Shobiz) fell on a beautifully sunny but really cold day; I barely ventured outside other than to watch the races, and for some I decided to watch on the televisions in the Manhattan Terrace. The year before that (Bob and John), it rained a miserable, cold, soaking rain. The…
Ed Fountaine in the NY Post reports that trainer Sid Watters died in Maryland last week. Watters, age 90, trained champions Slew o’ Gold and Hoist the Flag, whom I profiled at the end of January. The story of Hoist the Flag, which must have garnered a relatively similar amount of press coverage as the…
My Saturday mornings are often a leisurely stroll through racing history; with a cup of coffee (aside: for Christmas, my mother gave me one of those old-time stovetop espresso pots, and it makes the best coffee I’ve ever drunk. It’s a sublime source of Saturday morning pleasure), I check out the New York feature race,…
Brooklyn Backstretch 