The Grade 3 Saranac was Saratoga’s final 2014 stakes race, and Graham Motion won it. Ring Weekend’s triumph gave Motion two graded stakes wins on the meet; his first was Main Sequence’s Grade 1 Sword Dancer victory on August 17 — 10 years and three days after Better Talk Now provided Motion his first win in the race. The…
On day 33 of the 2014 Saratoga meeting, Jonathan Sheppard was ready to go home. “I’ve been ready,” he said frankly, standing outside his barn in the Oklahoma annex, a short walk from the training track. “It’s too stressful up here. I love it here, but I am a bit of a homebody, to be…
On Monday of the penultimate week at Saratoga Race Course, Kim Dutrow was getting ready to head home to Pennsylvania with her trainer husband Tony to check on their horses at Fair Hill. But first, they had to wait until about 4:00, until after the sixth race, when their Pennsylvania-bred 4-year-old filly would be going…
For a man whose work depends on pedigree, consignor Marshall Silverman is living proof that bloodlines aren’t everything. Standing on the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sales grounds last Sunday, outside the empty stalls that housed his Saratoga consignment of New York-breds, Silverman wore jeans, a blue, red, and white checked shirt, and a Maryland Horse Breeders Association…
When you think about super-trainers, you might think Todd Pletcher. You might think Chad Brown. You might think Bob Baffert. You probably wouldn’t think Jonathan Sheppard. But get the Pennsylvania-based trainer talked about his racing operation, and you might change your mind. Continue reading at The Racing Biz… Featured image: Photo credit NYRA/Adam Coglianese
The Dutrow stable is tucked into a shady corner of Horse Haven, not far from where racing began in Saratoga in 1863, on a farm near what would become the Oklahoma training track. A sign with a big red D emblazoned on a field of black adorns the side; horses and humans walk under the…
Sally Rohrbach stands by a fence behind her sprawling house in Harwood, Maryland, a short ride from Annapolis. Glimpses of the South River are visible down the hill from the front yard. She whistles, looking across several paddocks, over the heads of the three miniature horses that live closest to the barn, a handful of…
In early March, Maryland-based trainer Pat Dale was preparing Third Regiment, a Pennsylvania-bred retired Thoroughbred racehorse, for the next step in his second career: a performance in the Battle of the X’s in Texas, after which he’d be auctioned off to a buyer approved by Remember Me Rescue, which was coordinating the event. With thirty years…
When it comes to marketing to women, racetracks generally rely on a familiar formula: raise money for breast cancer, promote wearing pink, emphasize fashion, and act like you’re at a garden party instead of a horse race. Black-Eyed Susan Day this Friday at Pimlico hits a lot of those notes, but it doesn’t stop there,…
To some observers, the most damning element of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) video of trainer Steve Asmussen’s barns is that it reveals nothing that violates racing’s medication rules. That video, released in March and covered by The New York Times, purported to show what really goes on behind the scenes of a…
Brooklyn Backstretch 