“In 1903…a skinny, pleasant lad of 15 applied for a job at the Sanford Stud Farm in Amsterdam, N.Y. His name was Hollie Hughes and he was taken on as a night watchman.” — Red Smith, “Some Reflections on a Horseman” Hughes’ name is practically a byword for Sanford Stud Farm, the racing and breeding…
Saratoga Race Course kicks off its premier summer meeting this afternoon in Saratoga Springs, New York, the racing world descending on the small upstate city for seven weeks of high-class racing. Opening weekend will see four graded stakes races, among them the Sanford Stakes, being run for the 100th time. The race is named for…
It was in 2008 that I first made the historical acquaintance of Hollie Hughes, a man who devoted himself to and made a life in horse racing, a man as closely linked to one of racing’s first families as anyone could be. In 2008, I wrote of Hughes and of Sanford Farm, the place where he…
“A fitting tribute to one of the stoutest supporters of the sport New York State has ever known.” So wrote the Daily Racing Form about the inaugural Sanford Stakes, named to honor a family from nearby Amsterdam, New York, that began racing its homebred horses at Saratoga in the 1880s. Beginning with General Stephen Sanford and continuing…
The race named for Hollie Hughes hasn’t been around all that long – only since 1979 – but it honors a man whose life in racing began 98 years ago, a man who worked for a stable – Stephen Sanford’s Hurricana Farm — that was racing at Saratoga as far back as 1880. The Sanfords’…
Yesterday’s running of the Sanford Stakes may well not go down in history; scratches reduced to the field to four, and while there was plenty to like in Desert Party’s victory, I’m not sure that many of us are stretching towards his Derby bandwagon, and who knows if we’ll even remember his name a year…
Ed Fountaine in the NY Post reports that trainer Sid Watters died in Maryland last week. Watters, age 90, trained champions Slew o’ Gold and Hoist the Flag, whom I profiled at the end of January. The story of Hoist the Flag, which must have garnered a relatively similar amount of press coverage as the…
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 