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Joe Clancy 
Fair Hill Training Center is, after all, on a hill – just not quite the kind of hill Bode Miller normally works. The Olympic skier continued his foray into Thoroughbred racing by purchasing a barn at the Maryland Thoroughbred facility this month.
It all goes back to Northern Trick. Stavros Niarchos, international shipping tycoon and worldwide Thoroughbred owner/breeder, spent $530,000 to buy the yearling daughter of Northern Dancer at Keeneland in 1982.
Dual Eclipse Award winner Main Sequence was injured in the United Nations Handicap at Monmouth Park July 5 and will be retired by owner Flaxman Holdings.
The first Saratoga steeplechase race is 18 days away, but there is plenty of action for the up-and-over set at Parx Racing in Bensalem, Pa. – on the flat and over jumps. Sunday, two $25,000 races for steeplechasers help fill up a 10-race card. Tuesday, three hurdle races will be part of a 10-race lineup.
Automakers call it pick up. Step on the gas pedal, and a quality machine responds. With the right car, the only visible sign is an increase in speed.
Citing a problem determining accurate withdrawal dates for the controlled therapeutic medication methylprednisolone acetate, the National Steeplechase Association reversed two stewards’ rulings from this spring – eliminating $1,000 fines to two trainers from spring violations and following a similar decision by the Virginia Racing Commission.
Kate Dalton goes to her barn at the Camden Training Center in South Carolina every morning and thinks about African Oil, the French-bred gelding who might be the best rookie hurdle horse in the United States.
Paddock time is first. Then comes training. If the trainer doesn’t get to either quickly, African Oil lets her know.
Jazz Napravnik laughs when people talk about a shortage of Thoroughbred racehorses. Yes, the trainer knows the foal crop is down and some racetracks struggle to attract full fields. But from where she sits, as a dual-purpose trainer based in Maryland, there are plenty of horses.
Bob Feld starts with the oldest line known to the tellers of horse tales. “It’s a long story, but I can shorten it for you.” And thus begins the fable of Miss Temple City, an American hopeful in Friday’s Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot in England.
It took longer than I thought it would.
The final furlong of Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, the one that gave American Pharoah and all of Thoroughbred racing the Triple Crown, lasted about 12 seconds but it seemed like an hour. He was going to win, he was going to make history, he was going to silence 37 years of doubt and slay 37 years of demons. People were going to go crazy. Hell, they were already going crazy up and down the Belmont stand, the noise bellowing in pitch and rolling high and low like some sort of tidal force.
Then time stood still.
