The CEO of the New York Racing Association, O’Rourke hadn’t yet marked his first anniversary in the position when he was thrust into a maelstrom of a public health emergency, a financial crisis, and zero certainty about the future, both immediate and long-term. On March 7, Aqueduct Racetrack hosted the G3 Gotham Stakes, a…
Saratogians are proud of the Travers Stakes. Most of the thousands of fans who show up every year probably don’t know that the race was first run in 1864, or that it was named for one of the men who established Saratoga Race Course; they do know that the day of the Travers is something…
It is the rare Thoroughbred that gets a formal retirement ceremony. Earlier this year, Justify, the 13th winner of the U.S. Triple Crown, paraded on the track before heading off to a stud career, but most horses move quietly on from the racetrack, their retirements noted only in their disappearance from the entries. As 2019 begins,…
A decade ago, the New York breeding industry was in a steep downturn. The 2008 economic crisis had led to farms closing and mares being shipped to other states, and a program that had worked to establish itself with quality breeding seemed in danger of becoming almost irrelevant. Fast-forward to 2018, and the situation is…
The frozen paddocks of upstate New York are a long way from the sweltering devastation of Puerto Rico. At the ReRun adoption and retraining facility in East Greenbush, New York, about 40 miles south of Saratoga Springs — where the temperature was 2 degrees Fahrenheit (-17 degrees C) on a recent morning, a nine-year-old U.S.…
“Campaigning elite athletes in partnerships for more than 30 years.” Find your way to the Centennial Farms website, and this is the tagline that you will greet you. It’s also the philosophy with which Don Little Jr., president and co-owner of Centennial, opens a conversation in the track kitchen at Belmont Park. “In any successful business,…
Four years ago, London Bridge became the first New York-bred to win a Breeders’ Cup race when he won the $500,000 G2 Marathon at Santa Anita. Bred by Patricia S. Purdy and owned by Waratah Thoroughbreds, London Bridge raced in England and France, making his first and only start in the United States that day.…
Racing traditionalists will remember that, not too long ago, the excitement of the Saratoga meet gave way to the excitement of what was known as the Belmont Fall Championship meet. Stakes races like the Woodward (now held at Saratoga) and the Jockey Club Gold Cup headlined a two-month meeting at Belmont Park that often decided…
“There’s this nice boy next door,” trainer Paul Kelley remembers his mother-in-law, Mary Beninati, telling him a little more than 20 years ago. “He loves the horses. Can’t you give him a job?” Beninati lived in Mechanicville, New York, next door to Jerry and Patti Brown and their horse-crazy son, Chad, who’d grown up going…
The last time three different horses won the U.S. Triple Crown races, none of them won the award for champion 3-year-old male. That honor went to Will Take Charge, a horse that finished eighth in the Kentucky Derby, seventh in the Preakness, and 10th in the Belmont Stakes. But he got good — really good…
Brooklyn Backstretch 