“My lady prioress, and by your leave, So that I knew I should in no way grieve, I would opine that tell a tale you should, The one that follows next if you but would. Now will you please vouchsafe it, lady dear?” “Gladly,” said she, and spoke as you shall hear. (Chaucer’s The Prioress’s…
Happy Fourth of July! Across the country, we will spend today grilling; watching baseball; drinking beer; going to the beach; sitting in traffic; watching fireworks. Some of us will be working; some might make it to the racetrack. We’ll see friends and family. If you live in New York, you’ll enjoy the blissful emptiness and…
Today’s 115th running of the Suburban Handicap at Belmont is the last leg of the Handicap Triple Crown, a concept with which I’ve become enamored over the last few months and that is largely ignored by the rest of the racing world. It’s not as if trainers circle the dates of the Handicap Triple Crown…
Last spring, Greg Avioli’s decision to re-name the Distaff and to move all the filly/mare races to Friday occasioned much discussion in the racing press and in blogs. Some of us were even moved to start a petition to express our distress at this move, and to ask that Avioli and the Breeders’ Cup re-consider…
Shug, Phipps, and fillies: a racing combination that we ignore at our peril. An incomplete list of Phipps racing females trained by Shug McGaughey: Personal Ensign. Pine Island. Inside Information. My Flag. Storm Flag Flying. Smuggler. Need I go on? I can… (and I should have–thanks, LJK, and sorry, Heavenly Prize!) Small wonder, then, that…
Thanks to the folks at The Rail, for featuring this post along with those of other TBA bloggers in today’s Blog Roll feature. Today’s feature at Belmont is the Sands Point, upgraded to a Grade II this year, at a mile and an eighth on the turf for three year old fillies. Sands Point is…
You knew it was coming, right? You knew that I couldn’t let the historic Met Mile go by without delving a little—or a lot—into its history? The Met Mile (official name: Metropolitan Handicap) is the first Grade I of the year at Belmont, and it was inaugurated in 1891, when it was won by a…
Today’s feature race at Belmont is the Grade II Sheepshead Bay Handicap, run on the turf at a mile and three-eighths for fillies and mares, three and up. A neighborhood in Brooklyn, Sheepshead Bay was home to a racetrack from 1884 – 1910. In 1911, horse racing was declared illegal in New York State, and…
Note: This post is up over at The Rail. Come on by for a visit… Two weeks ago today, the conversation that began with Rags to Riches a year ago continued when Eight Belles broke down in the Derby, and her connections were pilloried for having the audacity and bad judgment to run her against…
I was already feeling guilty about not supporting one of my home tracks on its closing weekend; now that the Withers has become something of an end-of-season embarrassment, I am even more chagrined about my defection to points south instead of being at Aqueduct today. This storied race, first run in 1874, drew a field…
Brooklyn Backstretch 