Trainer Leah Gyarmati gave up an academic career for a life at the racetrack, so it is, perhaps, a little ironic that the filly who brought her her first graded stakes victory is named Sweet Reason. Gyarmati had an off-again, on-again relationship with reason earlier in her life, wrestling with the decision to stay in…
“’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…
Once upon a time, there was a horse called Spinaway. She was a chestnut, and she was born in 1878. Pedigree Query says that she raced nine times and won seven races, and that her career ended when she was three, in 1881. That year, someone in Saratoga named after a stakes race for her.…
