Joe Clancy

Hurricane Sandy blasted New Jersey – and much of the East Coast – in the summer of 2012, all but stranding trainers and horses at the New Jersey track. That’s when Monmouth Park-based trainer Mike Lerman got a phone call that changed his life.

Mike Smith makes sure he’s ready at the start of every race he rides. When he rides Songbird, he double-checks everything – because the start might be the hardest part.

Like a baseball player hitting the ball hard – but right at fielders – Scorpiancer was due. After winning two of his first three American starts last year, the Irish-bred lost five races to begin 2016.

For a guy who got sat on by a horse Thursday afternoon, Jack Doyle is pretty cheerful.

“I’m not feeling too bad,” the steeplechase jockey said Friday, about 24 hours after falling with Rudyard K in the Grade 1 Lonesome Glory at Belmont Park. “I’m a lot more comfortable than I was yesterday.”

An English jump jockey in America is not news, not anymore. But an English jump jockey who boxes, now that’s news. Alice Mills, whose background includes three-day eventing, tetrathlon, races on the flat and over jumps and – yes – boxing, recently arrived in Maryland for a job with leading trainer Jack Fisher and will be aboard two horses at Belmont Park Thursday.

At Keeneland November in 2012, bloodstock agent Steve Young spent $310,000 to buy a weanling for owner Bob LaPenta. As a son of leading sire Tapit and Grade 2 winner Spice Island, and a half-brother to Grade 1 winner Ice Box, the colt looked the part.

Then he didn’t.

You ready for some jump racing? The National Steeplechase Association’s autumn (let’s not say fall) racing schedule comes to life Thursday at Belmont Park and extends into racing Saturday at Shawan Downs in Maryland and Sunday at Foxfield in Virginia.