Several members of the racing press have alluded this week to an interview of Charles Hayward that was broadcast over the NYRA cctv system at the track this week. As I tuned in to my TiVo’d Inside Racing tonight, expecting to watch Evening Attire’s win in the Queen’s County for the twelfth or thirteenth time,…
The Blood-Horse has put much of its synthetic surfaces edition online for free. I’d like to think that what I wrote at the end of this post had something to do with it (someone at The Blood-Horse did see the post, according to good old StatCounter), but I fear that I’d be gravely overestimating the…
One of the topics highlighted in the recent edition of The Blood-Horse is the lack of information about equine breakdowns during training hours. Tuesday’s Daily Racing Form noted three breakdowns during morning training that day on Hollywood Park’s Cushion track; the item was buried in a longer piece, headlined by a story on Nashoba’s Key.…
The combined forces of The Blood-Horse’s writers have done a terrific job of exploring the various issues associated with synthetic track surfaces. As with most issues that can be viewed from multiple perspectives, I suspect that readers will bring their biases (no pun intended) to this issue of the magazine, and that both detractors and…
More Evening Attire news: Steve Crist writes about him in his blog, proving that even handicappers have hearts, and Jenny Kellner wrote a follow-up article on the NYRA website, focusing on Evening Attire’s “grandfather,” Tim Kelly, Hall of Fame trainer; breeder and part owner of Evening Attire; and father of Pat Kelly, Evening Attire’s current…
In today’s Saratogian, Michael Veitch writes about Evening Attire’s victory in the Queens County on Saturday and links it compellingly to the racing franchise debacle, throwing darts squarely at New York State’s three political, ahem, “leaders.” With the clock winding down on the New York Racing Association’s license toconduct racing, Evening Attire was a noble…
At approximately 6:25 this evening, I was jumping up and down in my living room, pumping my fist, and saying, “Come on! Come on! Get up! Get up!” My cats looked at me as if I were crazy, and apparently the Thoroughbred Action replay of the Queens County Handicap heard me, as Evening Attire did…
It’s a little weird to be going to a racetrack and not to the races, but for the second weekend in a row, that’s what I’m doing. Today is the Anna House holiday party, at which the children of the backstretch workers can pick out donated presents to give to their families. The parents wait…
The Race Track Industry Program of the University of Arizona holds annually its Symposium on Racing & Gaming, which is currently taking place in Tucson; much of the news generated about the racing world this week has come from the symposium, and you can see a full list of its programs here. I went in…
It’s late and I’m cranky, because I just gave up a perfectly good evening to watch my beloved Blueshirts embarrass themselves for the second consecutive game, this time against Original Six rival Toronto. It was ugly, folks; it was ugly. The Canadian National Anthem was by far the most pleasant part of the evening. So…
Brooklyn Backstretch 