Join The Saratoga Special Readers Club for exclusive access to news, swag, discounts, special events and more
A cursory look at the past performances could lead one to believe the proverbial light went on for Pauseforthecause, who reeled off three consecutive convincing wins after going 0-for-6 to start 2019. And while those three running lines, which include her two best speed figures, stand out, her efforts to that point indicate it was only a matter of time before she smiled for the camera.
John Kimmel was showing a visitor around the barn at Saratoga and stepped into the stall for a meet and greet. If the big chestnut gelding cared that two humans entered his domain, he didn’t really let on.
The New York Racing Association delayed the opening of Saratoga Race Course’s Oklahoma Training Track Wednesday. The news did not come as a surprise, with New York ravaged by thousands of cases of coronavirus and little movement on the racing front since Aqueduct suspended racing indefinitely March 19.
You couldn’t blame John Sakkos and his Beach Haven Thoroughbreds partners for wondering what’s so hard about this horse racing game. Beach Haven, a syndicate formed in 2017, has raced three horses who have combined for nine wins, six seconds and a third in 21 starts. That’s a 43-percent win and 76-percent on-the-board rate.
“Thank you very much…we’re surprised…”
That’s as far as Harvey Diamond had gotten.
Marshall Gramm and Clay Sanders didn’t expect too much when they sent Critical Value to Jeremiah Englehart’s string at Saratoga Race Course last spring.
Sackatoga Stable’s Tiz the Law, winner of last year’s Grade 1 Champagne and a major player on the road to the 2020 Triple Crown, was named New York-bred Horse of the Year and champion 2-year-old male Monday by the New York Thoroughbred Breeders Inc.
Kurt Becker likes his spring routine. He’s honed it for more than two decades as Keeneland’s track announcer – its only announcer, sans a short stretch early in his tenure – and like everyone across the country saw it thrown off kilter in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Kiaran McLaughlin changed direction last week, ending a successful two-plus-decade run as one of the country’s leading trainers to return to work as a jockey’s agent for Luis Saez.
