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Joe Clancy 
Let’s try this again. After being rained out last month, steeplechasers return to Monmouth Park today for two races on the July 4 holiday card. The $30,000 maiden hurdle races will be the first (post time 1:15 p.m.) and third (2:12) races on the day, which includes the $75,000 Rumson Stakes as the fifth.
He’s off to a rocket start on the 2019 season with 15 wins through May while riding first call for leading trainer Jack Fisher. Englishman Michael Mitchell has ridden horses races all over the world, and the United States steeplechase circuit is his latest stop.
When eight female hurdle horses line up for Saturday’s Iris Ann Coggins Memorial Stakes at Fair Hill, they’ll help honor someone who saw their value. Coggins, who died in 2015, was a loyal volunteer at Fair Hill and a staunch supporter of opportunities for fillies and mares on the racetrack.
At the press conference after War Of Will’s Preakness Stakes win Saturday, trainer Mark Casse answered all the questions – even one from an infield lax bro who clearly wasn’t with the media – but also made sure to make a point about someone who wasn’t there.
We will assume the horses don’t have ready access to newspapers, websites, Twitter (despite a few @HorseNameHere accounts out there) or the Today Show, so War Of Will knew nothing of the drama following the Kentucky Derby – where Maximum Security won and was disqualified for interfering with (among others) War Of Will.
Nor was War Of Will aware of the defections of the first five home in the Derby – Maximum Security, Country House, Code Of Honor and Tacitus.
The security guard was just doing her job, and roused several dozen owners, trainers and horsepeople assembled on the Pimlico Race Course turf course as the clock ticked toward post time for Saturday’s Preakness Stakes.
April 14, 1984 makes it more than 35 years ago now. A crowded Pimlico Race Course winner’s circle in the rain. Muddy chestnut horse. Fourteen people. Mom, Dad, Sheila, Sean, Fee the Iranian van driver, owner George Strawbridge, his wife Nina, their kids Sanna and Stewart, super fan Reddy Stewart, super groom Lonnie Fuller, jockey Paul Nicol Jr. and a mostly hidden valet.
Mike Trombetta commutes to his barn at Laurel Park or Fair Hill Training Center pretty much every day. It’s an hour either direction, so there’s plenty of time to think. About horses.
Lions. Absolute lions. Or at least lion-hearted. As Saturday’s Iroquois Steeplechase reached its crescendo, Surprising Soul and Scorpiancer turned the final corner, and squared up two fences and a quarter-mile of uphill straightaway.
Neither cracked. But one had to win.
