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Joe Clancy 
Ken McPeek had just won the Travers with 34-1 shot Golden Ticket, in a crazy dead heat with favorite Alpha, and everybody wanted a moment of the trainer’s time. But he still had work to do on that August afternoon at Saratoga Race Course in 2012.
The Irish are coming, the Irish are coming, the Irish are coming. Actually, they’re here.
Saturday’s Iroquois Steeplechase in Nashville, Tenn. features Nichols Canyon and Shaneshill, two raiders from the ultra-deep barn of champion trainer Willie Mullins who will have a go at America’s best in a 3-mile race worth $200,000. They’re part of a nine-horse field in the first Grade 1 jump race of 2016, and face the likes of Eclipse Award winner Demonstrative and recent runaway Temple Gwathemy victor Rawnaq.
Christian Hansen will watch Saturday’s Kentucky Derby on television, while keeping an eye on several mares at Blackstone Farm. Stuart Grant will host 150 people at his annual Derby party, and fight the urge to think about what might have been. The men are responsible for the two Pennsylvania-bred runners in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby.
A week after trying to run two rivals off the race course – and succeeding with one – at the Grand National, Senior Senator became the youngest Maryland Hunt Cup winner in 53 years Saturday with a front-running, logic-defying triumph for raw ability.
There were three naked, hot, wet women in my car Sunday. If that doesn’t make you keep reading, nothing will. But, sorry, that’s as risqué as this gets. The women – Sam Clancy, Julie DeFelice and Cathy Roelke – ran Philadelphia’s Broad Street Run Sunday morning in the rain and cold and rain and cold and rain and cold.
It’s 2:23 on the last Saturday of April in Maryland’s Worthington Valley just north of Baltimore. In less than an hour, the 13 horses in the Maryland Hunt Cup will leave for the paddock. Let’s walk the shedrow.
The last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of April do funny things to hours, minutes and seconds on certain Thoroughbred farms in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. It’s time for the Maryland Cup, North America’s oldest and most traditional steeplechase race.
Can you hang black bunting on an auto-repair shop? That’s what I think about every time I drive past Fair Hill Auto, the local place where cars get fixed and stories get told.
Oh what a difference a year makes. In 2015, Raven’s Choice made his timber stakes debut in the Grand National. The Maryland-bred finished a solid third, learned plenty of lessons and earned a spot in the Maryland Hunt Cup a week later. But it was all part of a process.
Barry Irwin wrote a book, and you’re in it. OK, maybe you’re not but it probably made you take a brief pause. Irwin, head of the Team Valor racing syndicate, once said trainers lied to him – on national television – and has unabashedly spoken his mind for decades in the business. And now he’s written a book? Look out. TIHR’s Joe Clancy caught up with Irwin to discuss the book (Derby Innovator, The Making of Animal Kingdom), Kentucky Derby winner turned dual-continent stallion Animal Kingdom, Team Valor, racing and more.
