Published August 23, 2024 Over the last few months, a trio of Mid-Atlantic-bred fillies and mares have established something of a rivalry, often entered in the same turf sprints and trading wins and placings. Most recently, Dontlookbackatall (PA), Roses for Debra (PA), and Future Is Now (MD) were entered in the Caress Stakes (G3) at…
Back in 2017, the future looked bright for Wendell Fong. That it’s still bright today is the result of an unlikely confluence of circumstances and people combining to give the gelding a soft landing. After selling as a weanling for $47,000, he was purchased for $160,000 ten months later by Al Gold, who has campaigned…
Horses bred in the Mid-Atlantic make up nearly a third of a stacked renewal of the Caress Stakes (G3) at Saratoga on Thursday. The field is led by graded stakes winners Roses for Debra (PA) and Future Is Now (MD). The former is looking to repeat in this race, winning it last year by 2…
A little after 5pm ET on Friday afternoon, R. Larry Johnson answered the phone at his Virginia home, a bit surprised to hear from a reporter from Saratoga Springs. Alone in his family room, he’d just watched his four-year-old Maryland homebred Future Is Now win a tight photo finish in the Intercontinental Stakes (G2) at…
Under an unsettled Saratoga sky, R. Larry Johnson’s homebred Future Is Now earned her first graded stakes win in the $200,000 Intercontinental Stakes (G2T), edging favored Roses for Debra in a photo finish. Minutes after a downpour and high winds passed through Saratoga Race Course on June 7, nine fillies and mares lined up for the 5 1/2-furlong race run over a…
At no point during the running of the $150,000 Tremont Stakes did Studlydoright look like a winner, except for when it really counted. In the first stakes race of the four-day Belmont Stakes Racing Festival at Saratoga Race Course, the two-year-old colt broke with alacrity from post 1 under jockey Xavier Perez, putting a head…
Chris Feifarek may have a penchant for the fantastical in literature, but when it comes to horse racing, he is nothing if not pragmatic. On Friday morning, July 30, he sat in a box at Saratoga Race Course. It wasn’t his first trip to the track in upstate New York, but he’d never run a…
He should have been a contender. Of course, maybe he still will be. Right up until the starting gate opened for the Sanford Stakes (G3) at Saratoga Race Course on July 17, Maryland Brando looked like he was in with a chance. Though making only his second start, he had won his debut impressively at…
When Flavien Prat thanked “the pony girl” moments after winning the Preakness with Rombauer, he highlighted both the importance and the anonymity of the people whose very visible yet barely noticed work is an essential element of racetrack safety. On the principle that nervous Thoroughbreds, herd animals that they are, will relax more easily with a…
At the risk of stating the obvious, this year’s Triple Crown became something different from what we were used to the minute that Churchill Downs announced that it would host the Kentucky Derby on September 5. We’d suspected before that, of course. A month before the traditional Derby date, virtually the entire country was limiting…
Brooklyn Backstretch 