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Joe Clancy 
Normally, this would be Iroquois week but as we’ve learned in the last year plus nothing is normal. So…the steeplechase circuit does not go to Music City. But Pennsylvania’s Kennett Square, the Mushroom Capital of the World, will more than suffice with the Willowdale Steeplechase Saturday.
Make a little room, Jonathan Sheppard, Mikey Smithwick, Burley Cocks, Pete Bostwick, Janet Elliot and the others, Jack Fisher needs a seat. Steeplechase trainer Jack Fisher will join the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame this summer as part of the class of 2021 along with trainer Todd Pletcher and Triple Crown winner American Pharoah.
Ahh, the first Saturday in May is here. Feels early, and a little strange, because it is. The Kentucky Derby will get all the attention, but there’s a pretty fair card of jump races at Middleburg Spring in Middleburg, Va., too.
Forty-one seconds. No horse will ever work a half-mile that fast on Saratoga Race Course’s Oklahoma training track – not on purpose anyway – but it was the bullet figure (:41.09 to be precise, sort of) for depositing 25 tons of dirt in less than a sixteenth of a mile Tuesday morning as a complete overhaul of the historic 1-mile oval nears completion.
In May, you go to Saratoga because . . . well, I don’t know exactly. Sam and I needed a new location to take all these virtual meetings, it couldn’t hurt The Saratoga Special planning to make an appearance and it had generally been awhile. Oh yeah, a friend’s house was empty.
Stephen Panus, president of The Jockey Club’s media ventures and America’s Best Racing, endured every parent’s nightmare when his 16-year-old son Jake was killed in a car accident on Block Island in Rhode Island last summer.
Two wars and a pandemic. They’re the only things to stop the Maryland Hunt Cup since America’s greatest steeplechase race launched into being in 1894. So, off a dark year, timber horses are back in the Worthington Valley for the timber classic Saturday.
Two black-and-white photos, grainy but matted and framed, sit on the table in front of Dr. John R.S. Fisher. He’s in the 50-year-old images, the jockey aboard Landing Party at the 17th fence of the 1971 Maryland Hunt Cup, and tries to conjure the feeling of flight.
“That’s the greatest fence I ever jumped,” he says, slowly, as if he’s feeling it again. Must be some feeling.
After opening her career with three wins in five starts, including a victory in the Grade 2 Fair Grounds Oaks in March, Travel Column is a player in the discussion about the Kentucky Oaks. A couple years ago, she was just a yearling who spent time with chickens – no really. TIHR’s Tom Law caught up with breeder Chris Welker after the Frosted filly sold for $850,000 at Fasig-Tipton’s select yearling sale at Saratoga in 2019 and it’ll make you laugh.
Get back on the horse. The National Steeplechase Association turns another page of its spring day planner and gets to the Grand National, another historic timber-only meet on the Maryland circuit and the last prep for the Maryland Hunt Cup, Saturday in Butler, Md.
