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Aqueduct, Belmont Park, Saratoga, somewhere . . . Frank “Pancho” Martin and his son Jose were locked in a battle for leading trainer. Pancho led by two with two weeks to go in the meet, but Jose kept winning races with a claimer and looked like a threat to take the meet.

You ready? The question gets asked – rarely answered – around our office above Broadway in Saratoga Springs. We’re not, but we’re working anyway. The first edition of the 12th year (a dozen, folks) of The Saratoga Special will be out Friday morning for Opening Day.

Nina Gill Stewart, 71, passed away peacefully on June 26, surrounded by her children Sanna, Kathy and Stewart. (Obituary written by Liz Merritt Strawbridge and family).

Ross Geraghty asked Tom Voss the question, and got the answer. “Do you need me anymore?” the jockey said. “Probably not,” the trainer replied.

If I’d known I was going to write so many obituaries, I don’t think I would have started Steeplechase Times. Some – the ones about old-timers and legends such as Burley Cocks, Cary Jackson and John Thigpen – were honors to toil over. Others brought pain, anguish, questions.

“Well, I’ve been turnstiled, junkpiled and railroaded too . . . I’ve been laid low but don’t you know . . . “

Paul Rowland, trainer of multiple stakes-winning steeplechaser Preemptive Strike and others, died Friday, June 8 after battling cancer. Rowland was 44.

Hate our game? I love our game. I love it for the madness. For the unknown. For the highs and lows. I love it because out of all us experts, from all the analysis, from all the concocting and conjecture, nobody could come up with this scenario. I’ll Have Another scratched Friday afternoon, the day before his attempt at ending the Triple Crown drought. Some game.

Among the pain, confusion, questions and sadness after the Iroquois Steeplechase May 12 in Nashville, Tenn. came a supreme effort. Arcadius put on a clinic on how to win the Grade I. Because of fate, circumstance, mortality, he paid the ultimate price in the process.

Published in Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred May edition.

In an oversized wash stall in a white-sided barn on a hill, an Irishman leaned into a chestnut colt and sprayed crisp, clear, well-fed water down and over the horse’s knees. Smoking, of course, the horseman fed the occasional cigarette to his equine companion – who didn’t seem to mind – and even let the horse grab the hose now and then.