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Miles turned 13 Friday. If you ever need to be reminded that time flies, have a child. Working on a feature about Graham Watters for Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, I have the lede and the end, nothing in between (but don’t tell Joe). Two horses training off the farm, spring will be here soon. The satellite dish, … Read more
A text from a Tweet. A news alert. The kind you don’t want. Medina Spirit suffered a sudden death after working five furlongs… I texted, ‘Wow’ in response. That’s it. The worst wow. We were just finishing from training Lemonade Thursday and Saranac on a brisk December morning when my phone vibrated, I read it, … Read more
Sometimes you stumble upon the written word that stops the stumble, stops you in your tracks, stops your day. Somehow I found Tania Kindersley’s blog today. Perhaps, through my friend George Baker (the trainer). It’s a long read but worth it. Enjoy. https://taniakindersley.com/2021/11/30/when-the-lights-went-out/ For more from The Inside Rail, check out the blog’s main page.
Twenty seven degrees out there. Out there, meaning, out at the barn. I’m on the couch, thinking about the barn. This is partially why I was never going to train horses, I’d rather be on the couch – coffee and computer. We pushed starting time from 6:00 to 6:30. Winter hours. Dreaming about the Iroquois … Read more
Wow, what a finale at Charleston. Drama to the end. All centered around championship races. Jockeys Graham Watters and Tom Garner and trainers Jack Fisher and Leslie Young. “We were joking about at the start of the fall that it was going to go to the last day,” Watters said. “We didn’t think it would … Read more
The last day of the season. Always bittersweet. Always welcomed. Always dreaded. The great passage of time. The closure. Jockeys and trainers will breathe a big sigh of relief, back at the barn, in the jocks’ room, at breakfast Sunday morning, on the long drive home. The Charleston Steeplechase concludes another rollicking season of steeplechasing. … Read more
Flip, Red Sail, Charlie Brown, Whitey, Peanut Butter, Paul Brown, John Warner, Yahtzee . . . it took what seemed like hundreds of horses to teach me how to ride one. That batch there included some ponies of various shapes, sizes and dispositions, a couple of lesson horses at Mary Warner’s Derbydown Farm in Pennsylvania and a racetrack lead pony.
How did you spend the almost 20-minute delay before the debacle that was Friday’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf?
The second at Auteuil just ran, juvenile hurdlers jumping bullfinches and water jumps… Eleven stayers line up for the second at Aintree, I like Act Of God… A novice hurdle at Wincanton comes up next, I wonder if Richard Hutchinson is there… I’ve got a 10:30 departure scheduled for Montpelier. Annie and Miles were booked … Read more
