Brooklyn Backstretch

The Sham Stakes – Grade III, $200,000 – Santa Anita Park – 1 1/8 Miles,by Brian Nadeau
As opposed to the Fountain of Youth, the Sham brings together one known quantity in The Pamplemousse, and several others who have yet to make their mark on the big stage. The former rates a deserving favorite and potentially [...]

The Fountain of Youth Stakes – Grade II, $250,000 – Gulfstream Park – 1 Mileby Brian Nadeau
When I first heard this race was being shortened to 1-mile, and therefore being run at one-turn, I was really disappointed. It’s doesn’t quite have the appeal it once did and it loses a little of its luster as [...]

The wonderfully whimsical world of racing language offers a seemingly unending array of linguistic puzzles. We’ve got “breezed” and “placed,” previously discussed here, and lately, I’ve been thinking about “bounce.”
One need not consult a dictionary to determine the word’s literal and figurative meanings, which in most cases are positive when the word is used in [...]

After watching the first week of Jockeys and reading regular updates on subsequent episodes, I haven’t seen/read much that would inspire me to devote much of my viewing time to it.
Trust the Quinella Queen to find the little bit of literary wheat among all the chaff! The Internet’s best turf-loving librarian takes us [...]

The first person I spoke to at Aqueduct on Sunday told me that he’d come out to the track to cheer on Joe Parker’s filly in the Busher.
That person must have been very, very happy at about 3:51 pm.
Channing Hill sat the rail aboard What A Pear, stalking comfortably in third until they hit the [...]

Busher broke her maiden in her first start, on my birthday in 1944 (several decades before I was born, I hasten to add). That victory kicked off a Belmont-centric two-year-old season in which the filly raced at the big oval six times, winning four starts, and finishing second and fourth once each. [...]

A look at the week that was in Derby preps, by Brian Nadeau
With little in the way of Derby prep races this weekend we’ll just take a look back at the trio of stakes that were run last weekend, as well as an important allowance Thursday at Gulfstream. We saw the reemergence of the Derby [...]

So the first week of Road to the Roses is in the books, and I’m still in the realm of respectable. The standings:
Tied for first: Triple Crown73 Stable, The Aspiring Horseplayer Redux, Grevelis Racing Stable, Big Dreams Stable
5th: Blake Griffin For President
Tied for 6th: Vision Stable and Tripledeadheat
Tied for 8th: [...]

A year ago, I first made the acquaintance of Hollie Hughes, a man who devoted himself to and made a life in horse racing, who is as closely linked to one of racing’s first families as anyone could be—and of whom most racing fans have never heard.
A year ago, I wrote of Hughes and of [...]

Monday at Aqueduct, before the fifth race:
A journalism student, covering the Big A for a school assignment, looking bored and utterly uninterested in the goings-on below, asks a veteran turf writer: “So what are you writing about today?”
Turf Writer explains that he’s likely going to be focusing on out-of-town racing, given the [...]