When Flavien Prat thanked “the pony girl” moments after winning the Preakness with Rombauer, he highlighted both the importance and the anonymity of the people whose very visible yet barely noticed work is an essential element of racetrack safety. On the principle that nervous Thoroughbreds, herd animals that they are, will relax more easily with a…
We end this crazy Triple Crown season with Brian’s final race preview of the year. Despite an unpredictable schedule and way more races to handicap, Brian continued his masterful, detailed analysis, as he has for a decade. My deep and heartfelt thanks for all of his work, and I hope that he helped you cash…
On March 4, Jillian Tullock walked into Laurel Park to begin work as the racing secretary for the Maryland Jockey Club. She oversaw exactly six days of racing before Covid-19 led to the suspension of racing in Maryland, a suspension that is ongoing, much to the frustration of the state’s racing community. “It’s mind-boggling to…
At the risk of stating the obvious, this year’s Triple Crown became something different from what we were used to the minute that Churchill Downs announced that it would host the Kentucky Derby on September 5. We’d suspected before that, of course. A month before the traditional Derby date, virtually the entire country was limiting…
Question: How did Bourbon War get his name? Answer: Spirits and Springsteen. When Mike McMahon and Jamie Hill decided to keep the Tapit colt they’d intended to pinhook, they knew that he’d have “bourbon” in his name. They race in the name of Bourbon Lane Stable, and in this age of branding and name recognition,…
Pimlico: The GI, $1.5 million Preakness at 1 3/16 miles by Brian Nadeau #1 War of Will (4-1): The much ballyhooed eighth-place finisher in the Kentucky Derby (he was moved up to seventh after race winner Maximum Security was disqualified) sat a dream trip behind the speed in Louisville while tugging early, bulled his way…
As Alan Foreman sat watching the aftermath of the Kentucky Derby last Saturday afternoon, he had a Yogi Berra moment. “It was déjà vu all over again,” he said by phone this week. In 1980, Foreman was the state attorney representing the Maryland Racing Commission in Bertram and Diana Firestone’s appeal of the stewards’ decision in that…
Pimlico: The Grade I, $1.5 million Preakness at 1 3/16 miles by Brian Nadeau #1 Quip (12-1): GII Tampa Bay Derby winner gutted it out for a well-beaten second behind the then-undefeated Magnum Moon in the GI Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park, then opted to skip the Kentucky Derby to run here as a fresh…
According to the Maryland Jockey Club’s logo for the feature race at Pimlico this Saturday, this year is Preakness 143. That would mean that the first edition of the race was run in 1873, when Survivor won it. (1918 counts twice, because there were two divisions that year.) If you go by the June 3,…
For Maryland Jockey Club stall manager Terry Overmier, it starts the day after the Kentucky Derby. The phone calls. The preparations. The orders for bedding. The stall requests. “Some trainers want to be in certain places, so I try to get them done first,” she said, standing outside stakes barn D on Preakness morning. “Then…
Brooklyn Backstretch 