It’s easy to remember Rachel Alexandra’s manhandling of the 2009 Woodward Stakes field at Saratoga Race Course – “She is indeed Rachel Alexandra the Great,” saith Mr. Durkin – but odds are you don’t have the same recall of the winner of the sixth race on the Monday of Travers Week in 2015.
Champion jockey Kieran Norris admits he'd contemplated retirement the past few years – starting when he broke his neck at the Radnor Hunt Races in 2017.
Notice anything different when you started watching the races from Saratoga this season?
No, no, no. Not the vacant stands, everyone expected that. What about the main track? The dirt, or more specific the color of the dirt. Surely that was noticed by those watching on TVs, laptops, tablets or phones.
When the voice on the other end of the phone belongs to Jerry D. Bailey and in answering a question about a horse he rode 36 years ago he mentions the horse in the same sentence as Cigar, it instantly becomes an E.F. Hutton moment.
When Jerry Bailey talks Cigar, people listen.
The inquiry concerned Fit To Fight, winner of the New York Handicap Triple Crown in 1984, the fourth and most likely last horse to accomplish that feat.
Michael McCarthy is thinking about traveling from his Del Mar base to Keeneland when Rushie makes an expected start in next Saturday’s Grade 2 Toyota Blue Grass Stakes.
“I feel OK about it, but it’s going to be a game-day decision,” McCarthy said. “You know why I feel OK about it? Because I’ve already had this stuff.”
Yeah, McCarthy has counted the days since coming down with Covid-19.
“A day in the life…” That’s how Mike Stidham starts off the conversation while checking on one of his three venues Thursday morning. Stidham and his partner, Hilary Pridham, were at Monmouth Park, looking over 65 horses with assistant Ben Trask. Pick another day and they might be overseeing their 48 horses at Fair Hill Training Center. In a few weeks, they’ll be at Keeneland to see assistant TC Stuckey and their 10-horse brigade. After that, perhaps, Colonial Downs with a projected 20 for the Virginia meet.
