Join The Saratoga Special Readers Club for exclusive access to news, swag, discounts, special events and more
Full on winter is finally gripping essentially the entire Northeast, with biting temperatures, snow and strong winds whipping down city streets and across the farm fields and paddocks. The Super Bowl is over and winter festivals are in full swing. We’re a day late again posting our (mostly) weekly hodge podge from the world of racing and hopefully not a dollar short.
When I was a kid, I grew up near Saratoga Springs, New York. Although I lived about 15 minutes from Saratoga Race Course, it would be years until I made my first visit. Much closer to our house, just a minute down the road, was the Saratoga County Airport.
We’ve got an abbreviated version of Here & There this week. Truth be told, typically if we’re light on content we might wait a week but this is no ordinary week because we’ve got something pretty cool we want to share. Check it out below, along with a few quotes in Worth Repeating and By the Numbers.
Tucked away amidst evergreen-lined fences in Sandy Spring, Maryland, is the lovely Avalon Farm. Trails wind through the woods that surround a beautiful, rustic main house, making the farm look truly like something out of a dream and the perfect home for the dream-like Thoroughbred.
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.
The Hronis Racing operation of brothers Kosta and Pete Hronis enjoyed the best season in its short history in 2016 and a significant peak was scaled when Stellar Wind took home a championship during last weekend’s 45th annual Eclipse Awards at Gulfstream Park.
Twenty days into the New Year and our notepads are starting to fill up, voice recorders in need of being emptied out. Sad to say this is the first edition of Here & There for 2016 and the first since the Breeders’ Cup wrap-up edition a few days after the big weekend in Lexington. Happy to say it’s back and we’re hoping (promising?) to slide it into a regular spot in the rotation.
Friday marks a signature moment in Pete Aiello’s life and racing career. Oaklawn Park opens the doors on its winter-spring meeting and Aiello will be at the microphone, becoming just the fifth announcer in the history of the popular Hot Springs, Arkansas, racetrack.
“If it wasn’t for Red Raven, you might not have ever been a rider.”
That’s what my 81-year-old father said to me over Christmas vacation. I thought about it for a minute. And then I thought long and hard about it later. He’s right. If it wasn’t for Red Raven, I would not have made a rider.
Thirteen years old – an observer, a non-participant in sports, classes, conversations, middle school dances. Thirteen years old – a kid who said he wanted to be a jockey but was afraid to ride. Thirteen years old – hiding and hoping I didn’t get found.
Six months after Better Talk Now’s upset in the 2004 John Deere Breeders’ Cup Turf, owner Brent Johnson of Bushwood Stable went shopping. At Keeneland’s 2-year-old sale in April 2005, Johnson put up $160,000 for a burly gray son of Cozzene out of the multiple stakes winning Dayjur mare Daylight Ridge.
