By Jessica Paquette When the last horse crossed the finish line at Suffolk Downs, I knew there were going to be a lot of things I would miss. At a racetrack, live racing promises that no two days are the same – there is the chance for greatness every single day. The thing I ultimately … Read more
The 20th edition of The Saratoga Special is already old news and there’s always come content that we couldn’t get in print. We were blessed with Richard Zwirn’s “Every Horse Has a Story” columns for the meet and offer up his final installment below. We thank Richard for the work and insight, and apologize we … Read more
That happened fast. The July edition of the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred magazine – where the thisishorseracing.com team spends much of its time – is out and includes plenty to read. Early Voting’s storm through the Preakness stretch makes the cover from a wild angle and Tom Law has the whole story, plus we connect the dots … Read more
The year was 2007, The Saratoga Special’s seventh in business. We were young (or less old), the paper was a tall tabloid (today’s version is more square), the participants were at once familiar and unfamiliar and the magic was still there. The Special set up in a half-under-construction house on Lincoln Avenue with a staff … Read more
You might come to thisishorseracing.com for steeplechase news or to find the latest edition of The Saratoga Special – or hopefully to sign up for The Saratoga Special Readers Club, buy a calendar or look into advertising – but much of our work for the last several years centers on the monthly print magazine Mid-Atlantic … Read more
How good was Flightline? The son of Tapit came into Sunday’s Grade 1 Runhappy Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita Park with two wins in as many starts, all at odds-on and each earning gushing praise from his connections and adoring fans.
With the 2021 Saratoga meeting all wrapped up, I’ve had some time to reflect on the opportunity given over the past two years at The Saratoga Special. I’ve never written a column before, but I hadn’t written a race recap before this summer either and things seemed to work out well.
To regular readers of this column it will come as no surprise that I know far less about horse racing than you do. A good chunk of our readership, after all, is active in the sport in one capacity or another.
A group of dedicated racing enthusiasts assembled on East Avenue each morning last year to soak in what little bit of horse racing they could outside of the Oklahoma Training Track. Though the views were limited, the same group of more than a dozen fans and photographers lined the fence each day without fail, thrilled to talk horses for a while instead of the usual pandemic discourse. This year, the view is different for the East Avenue crew, and so are the circumstances that bring them together.
In 1921, a headline-grabbing soap opera began in the racing world when Playfellow, a 3-year old full brother to Man o’ War was sold for $100,000, roughly $1.5 million in today’s money. The buyer was oil-baron Harry F. Sinclair, who later became notorious for his central role in the Teapot Dome oil scandal.
