As a yearling, the bay filly wasn’t terribly remarkable. Her breeder, Robert Manfuso, thought that the modest $30,000 she brought at 2014 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic fall yearling sale was a fair price, and when she got to the barn of trainer John Servis, his assessment of her was frank. “I wasn’t impressed,” he said, sitting in…
“COASTAL MOON tracked the pace setters most of the way, asked for run turning for home but was overwhelmed by outside runner, lost ground but fought back with a game performance… REBEL SPY trailed well off the rest of the field and hit his best stride late… RED POND was through after half a mile.”…
Last November, Ross Peddicord came to New York’s Equus Film Festival as an ambassador for Maryland horse racing. He expected the festival, which was being held for the second consecutive year in Manhattan, to serve as a platform for showcasing Maryland’s myriad equine activities. He didn’t expect to leave the festival wanting to bring a…
On the day before Thanksgiving, Jo Deibel got a call from a woman she knew through Angel Acres Horse Haven, her horse rescue farm in Glenville, Pennsylvania. The woman, Jennifer, had lost her mare the previous night, and her gelding was, posted Deibel on Facebook, “in great distress.” She needed another horse right away to…
At 5:35 a.m., Keri Wolfsont responds to a direct message within seconds. Every morning’s busy, but this one is particularly so, the eve of the Colonial Cup card in Camden, where she and a half dozen equine charges await tomorrow’s races. The assistant to Hall of Fame trainer Jonathan Sheppard, Wolfsont is based at his…
In some ways, Breeders’ Cup is just another racing weekend for Curtis Linnell. Like many observers of Thoroughbred racing, he’ll be watching the races, from home or in his office in Fair Hill, Maryland. He’ll have multiple screens and feeds around him, as will his colleague Laura Horah. But unlike those observers, Linnell will be…
Late on Thursday afternoon, Dark Hollow Farm’s David Hayden got a call from an unknown number, a call he nearly didn’t pick up. “It was the gas and electric company,” he said with amused incredulity. “They were telling me to be prepared for a huge storm.” The storm that initiated the unprecedented preemptive warning is…
In a June 21 op-ed in The Saratogian, New York Racing Association (NYRA) president and CEO Chris Kay chided those who cite attendance as a measure of success of the summer racing meet. “The questionable pursuit of trying to gauge the popularity of Saratoga using attendance as the metric should be apparent,” he wrote. “A…
On the first really hot day of the summer, Arch Kingsley had wrapped up morning training and chores a little before noon at his barn near the old Sanford complex, across Nelson Avenue from Clare Court. After a few months stabled at the main track before the meet opened, Kingsley and his 19 horses moved…
On June 13, 1953, Alfred G. Vanderbilt Jr. watched his homebred Native Dancer win the Belmont Stakes, eking out a nose victory to complete the third leg of Thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown. He’d won three weeks earlier, too, at Pimlico, but had lost the Kentucky Derby. One might have forgiven Vanderbilt for a bittersweet sadness…
Brooklyn Backstretch 