“’We bid you welcome to our cabin by the sea.’” With these words, the Coney Island Jockey Club announced its existence in September, 1879. Headed by Leonard Jerome, the club was formed to build a new racetrack in Brooklyn; “the sea” was Sheepshead Bay, in the southwest corner of the borough, and the racetrack that…
It’s Saturday afternoon, and Shug McGaughey sits placidly in a chair in the shedrow of barn 20. Intent on his Blackberry, he seems pleasantly oblivious: to approaching visitors; to an impending storm making itself known in stirring winds and scudding clouds; to a tempest of another kind, one created by the media as he gets…
The Preakness is Maryland’s race: it’s “Maryland, My Maryland” and black-eyed Susans and blue crabs. It’s so important to the state that when financial difficulties threatened racing in Maryland,the governor stepped in to make sure that the Preakness would stay in Baltimore. But 120 years ago, when financial woes imperiled the racing industry in Maryland, nothing…
An archaeologist by training, Lucas Rubin has spent a good deal of his life immersed in the past. He also loves cities, and he loves sports. In his book, Brooklyn’s Sportsmen’s Row: Politics, Society & the Sporting Life on Northern Eighth Avenue, he indulges his passion for all three. Read more at Brooklyn Bugle about an exquisite…
“He alone made it what it is today.” So began a 1949 New York Times article by Arthur Daley on the passing of Matt Winn. The article was called “The Passing of a Legend,” and what he “made” is the Kentucky Derby. Matt Winn, a racing impresario if ever there was one, worked at a dozen or…
Through the last week of February 1913, racing fans waited with hope. Earlier in the month, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court had upheld a 1912 New York State Supreme Court ruling that a man making a private bet at a racetrack was not breaking the law, and that race track operators could not…
On February 23, 1913, the New York Times weighed in on the recent decision by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, which upheld the November 1912 New York State Supreme Court ruling that that a man making a private bet at a racetrack was not breaking the law, nor could race track operators be…
When racing and government collide, the residents of the state of New York have learned to be patient. We waited for a VLT operator to be named. We waited for a franchise operator to be chosen. We waited for a board to be selected. We wait, still, for NYRA’s next CEO to be appointed. One…
If you think that little of racing note takes place in New York in February these days, imagine a century ago, when, though home to a handful of racetracks, New York didn’t conduct racing in the winter. And in the winter of 1913, racing hadn’t taken place in the state since September of 1910. But…
The graded stakes run earlier this month at Aqueduct have been around for a while: the Toboggan was first run in 1890, the Withers in 1874. When racing came back to New York in 1913, both were renewed, both at Belmont Park. The Withers was run on May 31, the day after racing returned for…
Brooklyn Backstretch 