It was time to start counting the days before I would leave for my 11-hour drive to Louisville, Ky. to cover the Kentucky Derby (G1). I had my manila folders filled with past performances, quotes, statistics, anecdotes, and other tidbits of information on all the Derby horses that I had...

Ironically, there’s a fly buzzing around the kitchen as I sit down in the dark, pour the first cup of coffee and think about John Prine....

You couldn’t blame John Sakkos and his Beach Haven Thoroughbreds partners for wondering what’s so hard about this horse racing game. Beach Haven, a syndicate formed in 2017, has raced three horses who have combined for nine wins, six seconds and a third in 21 starts. That’s a 43-percent win...

“Thank you very much…we’re surprised…” That’s as far as Harvey Diamond had gotten....

Innocent until proven guilty. That mantra is at the heart of the American criminal justice system, whether we're talking about someone holding a smoking gun while standing over a dead body or a Thoroughbred trainer caught on an FBI wiretap about “pumping and pumping and fuming every f—ing horse (that)...

With little action to write about in the upcoming weeks, we’re going to focus a little more on speed ratings that we follow to detect patterns that could suggest where these horses might be on the first Saturday in September, which right now seems like an eternity. They also can...

We read a lot about income inequality in the web world in 2020, and much of what we read is correct. But, as we often see in the web world, looking a little deeper we can learn a few important things.From the late 70's to today, real wages for the...

Marshall Gramm and Clay Sanders didn’t expect too much when they sent Critical Value to Jeremiah Englehart’s string at Saratoga Race Course last spring....

As horse racing fans begin a new week of quarantine, and as the weekend that was meant to open Keeneland has come and gone quietly, many of us are growing more desperate to see live images of Thoroughbreds on our screens. The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame...

The mid-to-late fifties was a time of peace and tranquility in America; a time when baseball, boxing, and horse racing dominated the sports world. The Dodgers and Giants were gone from New York, Elvis was stationed in Germany, and a new mellow sound of rock and roll was emerging with...

Oscar de la Renta died on Monday at his place in Kent, Connecticut. He left behind three sisters, a son, and a wife, the former Annette Engelhard Reed. Here is where the faithful reader may wonder why the demise of a famous fashion designer has turned up in a horse...

It’s the notices that bother me most....

Today, a news headline read: “A four-year-old female Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo has tested positive for the coronavirus.”  Imagine the shock in the global horse-racing industry if the report had said that Galileo or Tapit had contracted Covid – 19. Nadia, a four-year-old tiger at the Bronx Zoo,...

How good is this?...

Sackatoga Stable's Tiz the Law, winner of last year's Grade 1 Champagne and a major player on the road to the 2020 Triple Crown, was named New York-bred Horse of the Year and champion 2-year-old male Monday by the New York Thoroughbred Breeders Inc....

I got a note on Friday from a friend, detailing his view of the general credit markets and, in his first paragraph, oil.He doesn't wager, he trades, yet his mantra of making sure someone else is on the wrong side teaches us bettors' a lesson we all, deep-down know.Last Monday,...

When Tiz the Law (by Constitution) put away the competition and strode home a winner in the 2020 Florida Derby, the …Continue reading →...

Back in the days of Sunday Silence and Easy Goer, I was eager to learn about horse racing and started frequenting the Strand Bookstore in Greenwich Village. The silvery-blue glass of broken car windows was general along the city streets, and handmade signs taped inside parked cars advertised that the...

Spring is a time of new beginnings, and some more of our horses are moving to new paddocks. Like the three who moved last week, these horses are all still on the main farm. They’ve just switched paddocks. A few … Continue reading →...

Kurt Becker likes his spring routine. He’s honed it for more than two decades as Keeneland’s track announcer – its only announcer, sans a short stretch early in his tenure – and like everyone across the country saw it thrown off kilter in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic....

Thoroughbred trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro were among 19 defendants in a Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing doping scandal who pleaded not guilty on federal charges in an arraignment and initial pre-trial conference conducted telephonically on Thursday by District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil in the Southern District of New...

Yesterday, many of you were readying for the Cal Expo racing card, only to learn shortly before post time racing bit the bullet. As reported, the Country Director of Health instructed the track to shut down a few hours before post time.This, to me at least (and from what I...

Kiaran McLaughlin changed direction last week, ending a successful two-plus-decade run as one of the country’s leading trainers to return to work as a jockey’s agent for Luis Saez....

(The following is pure fiction and the chances of it actually happening are slim to none, but it does make for compelling thought, especially on April 1st, so let's have some fun with it)I have just written a script. It's not your everyday script. It is futuristic...well, not too far...

In normal times, life working on the backstretch of an American racetrack is difficult, with long hours for relatively low wages and often few or no benefits.  Additionally, grooms, hot walkers, exercise riders, and others in the largely immigrant labor force struggle with acclimation, including learning a new language and...