Searching wins the Correction Handicap of 1956 ©Keeneland-Morgan, credit to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame Yesterday I wrote about the Hirsch Jacobs family, U.S. racing royalty. Though the Jacobs family frequently bred horses, one of their best stories is a filly purchased from Ogden Phipps in 1955. Searching (War Admiral –…
The three-day holiday weekend means Monday racing at Aqueduct—perhaps not something to which to look forward, given the forecast, but with stakes races each day, it’s not going to be hard to be convinced to head out there…provided, of course, that the weekend cards don’t go the way of today’s, which is to say, out…
Neither a champion nor a Hall of Fame inductee, Busanda nonetheless lives on in two ways: through her bloodlines and one of those Aqueduct winter races that, when I first started following races, sent me to the archives to figure out who those eponymous horses were. I don’t know whose idea it was to name a…
Back in Brooklyn, after an excellent nine-day road trip, and how good of NYRA to be running the Ruthless on my re-entry day, the Ruthless, named after the excellent nineteenth century filly who won both the Travers and the Belmont in 1867. Ruthless was by Eclipse out of Barbarity, and she and her four full…
Happy 2009! I walked home from New Year’s Eve dinner in relatively balmy temperatures in the fifties, wearing just a light jacket, and turned on the television to watch the brave? foolish? insane? revelers back home in New York shivering in single-digit temperatures. Much as I love home, I can’t say that I was sorry…
The Gravesend Bay racetrack, under the supervision of Phil and Mike Dwyer’s Brooklyn Jockey Club, operated in Brooklyn from 1885 – 1910, its race dates alternating with those of the Sheepshead Bay track. The rise of anti-gambling legislation in New York led to its closure, and even though gambling became legal again in 1913, Gravesend…
I live in a city that takes unabashed glee in the evisceration of its physical history. Tourist and natives alike are hard-pressed to discover any remnants of the Dutch and British settlements that settled Manhattan; little is left of the glory of the Gilded Age; and even the more recent bohemian period is barely discernible…
On July 23rd, 1914, it was good to be James Butler. Six years earlier, he’d finally won his battle with the Jockey Club, and his Empire City race track in Yonkers, NY was given dates on the New York racing calendar. Now, in 1914, his own race track was running a race named after his…
Saturday’s Demoiselle offers any number of memorable renewals, won by any number of memorable fillies: broodmare extraordinaire Better than Honour’s win in 1989; Triple Tiara winner Chris Evert’s victory in 1973; Derby winner Genuine Risk’s triumph in 1979. Preceding generations likely have their own memories of the winners of this race, which was run for…
Saturday at Aqueduct brings the running of the Grade III Discovery Handicap, named for the horse whom author John Eisenberg calls “the most important equine purchase” of owner Alfred G. Vanderbilt’s life. Apparently unable to resist the obvious wordplay, Edward Hotaling, in They’re Off! Horse Racing at Saratoga, wrote that at age three “Discovery discovered…
Brooklyn Backstretch 