Today’s feature at Aqueduct is the 59th running of the Grade II Comely, run at a mile for three-year-old fillies. The race is named for the filly who at two beat older horses in the inaugural Fall Highweight Handicap at Belmont Park in 1914. She was owned by James Butler, owner of the Empire City…
Talked about missed opportunities. When I did my Spitzer picks last month, two of the horses came in: All Night Labor paying $26.80 and Yes It’s the Truth at $23.40. On March 21st, Yes It’s the Truth came back to win again, a day after I’d seen his sire at Three Chimneys, paying $25.20. Wednesday,…
Dateline: Asheville, NC Arrived here yesterday to pick up my friend Wade, and within literally minutes of pulling into town was drinking pink champagne at a cool little wine bar nestled into the Grove Arcade, a beautiful old building that is one of the highlights of the downtown Asheville landscape. Vacation is good. The serious…
Aqueduct offers the best of two racing worlds this afternoon, the present and the historical. We’ve got the Grade III Gotham, for three-year-olds with Derby aspirations. The race was first run in 1953 at the Jamaica racecourse and named for the city in which the track was situated, another in a line of races honoring…
Today’s feature at Aqueduct is the Busher, for three-year-old fillies at a mile and a sixteenth. Run for the first time in 1978, the race is named for the filly who was the Horse of the Year in 1945. She’s depicted here in a painting by J.N. Slick, from the National Museum of Racing collection.…
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 