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Joe Clancy 
For much of the spring, construction crews in Fair Hill, Md., have been working on a 165-foot water tower which – though built in a “retro” style to blend in with the surrounding area – can be seen for miles and certainly gets noticed by the racehorses at nearby Fair Hill Training Center.
Let South Carolina-based trainer Kate Dalton sum it up for you. Training racehorses, especially steeplechasers, when racing is shut down because of a global health crisis can get a little monotonous.
The Middleburg Spring Races of 2020 were meant to be a celebration of the historic meet’s 100th running in mid-April. One hundred. Since 1921, horses and people have been racing around Glenwood Park, watching from the boxes nestled into the rocks, socializing behind open tailgates along the home stretch and admiring one of American jump racing’s great vistas.
Imperial Hint, an Eclipse Award finalists for champion sprinter in 2017, 2018 and 2019, will retire from racing after wining 14 of 25 starts and earnings $2.2 million. The bay Florida-bred, trained by Louis Carvajal Jr. for Raymond Mamone, burst on to the national scene by winning the Grade 3 General George at Laurel in 2017 – the first graded score for the trainer and the horse.
A starting gate gets loaded one horse at a time, and that’s an apt guide for the return of racing in New York as the state begins to emerge from the worst of the coronavirus outbreak. With the first stage of eased restrictions by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Belmont Park plans to offer its first card of live racing since March 15 on June 3.
A pile of photographs sits on my desk. The pile was in a box, but I needed the box so I removed the photos. I’ve looked through some, once or twice, but not all. Then I moved on to something else. Then I came back to them. Then I left again. Then I came back. They’re random, from all eras and sources. I’m not sure how they wound up together in a box, but they amaze me.
This is Edition 2. Read the first here.
The 2020 Special, an online racing publication created May 2 by ST Publishing – home of thisishorseracing.com and The Saratoga Special – will publish four more editions this spring/summer in advance of the 2020 race meet at Saratoga Race Course.
The New York Racing Association today announced the 152nd renewal of the Grade 1, $1 million Belmont Stakes, to be contested at 9 furlongs, will take place Saturday, June 20 at Belmont Park as the opening leg of the Triple Crown for the first time in history. To align with required health and safety measures implemented in New York to mitigate risk and combat the spread of Covic-19, the Belmont Stakes will be held without spectators in attendance. In addition, NYRA announced that live racing, to be conducted without spectators, will return Wednesday, June 3, at Belmont Park.
It’s the third Saturday in May in Baltimore, the self-proclaimed Greatest City in America. It’s noon, I’ve consumed a little coffee, and not enough food or water. It’s 75 and sunny, in stark contrast to the last few third Saturdays in May. The last Preakness Day with no recorded rainfall was 2014. The BWI weather station has recorded a total of 1.11 inches of rain over the last five third Saturdays in May (which is stupid, because I don’t know anybody who lives at the airport). What a Preakness Day it could have been.
A pile of photographs sits on my desk. Been there for a month, maybe more. The pile was in a box, but I needed the box so I removed the photos. I’ve looked through some, once or twice, but not all. Then I moved on to something else. Then I came back to them. Then I left again. Then I came back. They’re random, from all eras and sources. I’m not sure how they wound up together in a box, but they amaze me.
