One of the topics highlighted in the recent edition of The Blood-Horse is the lack of information about equine breakdowns during training hours. Tuesday’s Daily Racing Form noted three breakdowns during morning training that day on Hollywood Park’s Cushion track; the item was buried in a longer piece, headlined by a story on Nashoba’s Key.…
The combined forces of The Blood-Horse’s writers have done a terrific job of exploring the various issues associated with synthetic track surfaces. As with most issues that can be viewed from multiple perspectives, I suspect that readers will bring their biases (no pun intended) to this issue of the magazine, and that both detractors and…
More Evening Attire news: Steve Crist writes about him in his blog, proving that even handicappers have hearts, and Jenny Kellner wrote a follow-up article on the NYRA website, focusing on Evening Attire’s “grandfather,” Tim Kelly, Hall of Fame trainer; breeder and part owner of Evening Attire; and father of Pat Kelly, Evening Attire’s current…
The Race Track Industry Program of the University of Arizona holds annually its Symposium on Racing & Gaming, which is currently taking place in Tucson; much of the news generated about the racing world this week has come from the symposium, and you can see a full list of its programs here. I went in…
It’s late and I’m cranky, because I just gave up a perfectly good evening to watch my beloved Blueshirts embarrass themselves for the second consecutive game, this time against Original Six rival Toronto. It was ugly, folks; it was ugly. The Canadian National Anthem was by far the most pleasant part of the evening. So…
You might recall that those are the words that Jay Privman of ESPN and Daily Racing Form used to describe the synthetic surfaces in California during an ESPN telecast in early October. Recently, a commenter on the discussion boards at Alex Brown Racing posted this article from the New Haven Register regarding toxins in the…
The good news is that when you Google “dirt vs. polytrack,” my post on this topic is the first link that comes up. The bad news is that when you Google “dirt vs. polytrack,” my post is the first link that comes up. What does it say about the information out there on this topic…
A cornucopia of interesting racing articles I encountered on Friday: Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch awards Jeannine Awards for her Breeders’ Cup coverage with the #1 spot in his media power rankings. Referring to her work as “polished” and “expert,” Deitsch compares Edwards favorably to other sideline reporters. While I think that Edwards does a good…
“Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,And like enough thou know’st thy estimate,The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing…” (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 87) Really… you had to know that this English teacher wouldn’t let the retirement of Shakespeare go by without throwing in a little poetry. The various Breeders’ Cup defections are covered…
Or as the former (California) school of a current colleague says, Happy Indigenous People’s Day. A collection of random thoughts on the weekend’s racing: After multiple attempts, I was finally able to catch Spooky Mulder’s race on Calracing; it was a four-horse field, but a typical Spooky race: he hung about four lengths off the…
Brooklyn Backstretch 