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Joe Clancy 
Mike Pons leans on a podium set up on some wet stone dust next to the door of the breeding shed. Behind him stands a Bobby’s Potty. Over his shoulder, 2 feet of snow gradually slides off the roof – landing periodically with a great “Schwalam.” In front of him, guests at Sunday’s Country Life Farm stallion show listen intently.
ST Publishing, publishers of the daily newspaper The Saratoga Special and the racing website This Is Horse Racing, will team for the third consecutive year with the New York Thoroughbred Breeders to produce a commemorative program for the organization’s Annual Awards Banquet this spring.
When Chuck Lawrence goes to work at Fair Hill Training Center, he knows the score even if he’s the only one keeping it.
At Haras de Saint Crespin, part of the Aga Khan Studs in France, a nearly white broodmare roamed a green field with her foal. Brown, but destined to take on his mother’s color, he faced a bright future filled with – perhaps – classic wins, a trip to America like his brother, the great Daylami, or maybe a victory in the famed Arc de Triomphe like another brother, Dalakhani.
But that’s not exactly how it turned out.
I was lucky, fortunate, to have grown up in a golden age of horse racing. Raised two blocks from Aqueduct Racetrack in South Queens, my buddies and I could hear the crowd roar every day as we played Wiffle Ball in the driveway. Every decade has it legends. But I had Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Affirmed, Alydar and Ruffian in my backyard.
“All right, you **********ers . . . I don’t want to see anything but elbows and **** flying.” With that bellow, from the top of the narrow stairway to the lower barn, and those well-placed profanities, Lonnie Fuller announced the beginning of storm preparations.
Imagining ate hay, lots and lots of hay. Bourbon Courage looked outside at the snow. If they knew their importance to Maryland’s Thoroughbred industry, they weren’t letting on.
Joe, you’re doing a great job with your blog.
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association, Daily Racing Form and the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters announced this evening that Zayat Stables’ American Pharoah, the Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner, was unanimously voted as Horse of the Year at the 45th Annual Eclipse Awards Ceremony at Gulfstream Park Racing & Casino in Hallandale Beach, Fla.
The steeplechasers are not the youngest Eclipse Award finalists, nor are they the fastest or the most valuable. The are, at this time of year anyway, the dirtiest.
