On a chilly afternoon in early March, Naughty New Yorker came home. After a van ride from Port Colborne, Ontario, where he had been standing at stud, to Old Friends at Cabin Creek in Greenfield Center, the 18-year-old millionaire was restless. He paced his stall. He looked longingly out the window at the horses nearby…
For the first time in a few decades, trainers Rick Schosberg and Bobby Ribaudo are working side by side again. Stabled together on the Saratoga backstretch, the two have between them more than 70 years of training experience. They’ve worked alongside the greats of the sport, like Allen Jerkens, Woody Stephens, and Sid Watters, and…
If this were an ordinary year, Saturday would not be Travers Day. If this were an ordinary year, hundreds of people would line up outside the gates of Saratoga Race Course in the wee hours of the morning, waiting for the gates to open so that they could charge inside to snag their preferred location,…
A few days ago, I got a message from a Twitter follower that I didn’t know was a racing fan. She said that she’d always been a racing fan and that her sister owns horses, and she’d come up from Brooklyn to Saratoga for the races. She was here on a day on which one…
That shouting you heard from the vicinity of Saratoga Race Course just before 7 p.m. on Sunday night? That was Joe Appelbaum, long-time backyard denizen, screaming at one of the TVs as he rooted home the eight horse, Cookie Crisp, on the lead heading to the wire under jockey Kendrick Carmouche. Appelbaum was live to…
Opening weekend at Saratoga brought many reasons to smile, not the least of which were two terrific stakes races in the Diana and the Coaching Club American Oaks. The blanket, competitive finish in the Diana contrasted with Songbird’s romp in the CCAO, each stirring the racing fan’s heart in its own way. Pleasing, too, is…
A few days before this weekend’s Florida Derby, Saratoga native Joseph DeSantis is doing errands in Lexington, Kentucky, shuttling between the three farms that his employer, Shadwell Stable, owns. With the exception of a three-year stint in Oklahoma, he’s made his home in the Bluegrass of central Kentucky for the last 20 years, most recently…
Last week, Saratoga Springs’ Mayor Joanne Yepsen proclaimed that August is Racehorse Retirement Month in the city. The proclamation came as part of an event at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame to introduce Racehorse Aftercare Charities of Saratoga Springs, a coalition of the area’s growing number of facilities dedicated to caring…
In the weeks leading up to the opening of this year’s Saratoga meeting, the New York Racing Association endured diatribes from all directions as the changes to this year’s season were gradually rolled out. Payment for picnic tables and the Carousel came in for particular criticism, along with new policies for paying admission prices and…
If you look at the numbers, it’s a very good time to be a breeder in New York. Yesterday the New York Racing Association held its first Saratoga Showcase Day of New York-breds, building on the success of the original day in October at the Belmont fall meet and last year’s addition of the Big…
Brooklyn Backstretch 