The Inside Rail

“Our greatest trait is our resiliency.”

That quote has become a mantra of ours, and we’re not talking politics, we’re talking horse racing, a game which continues to test our resiliency and resolve.

Plains, trains and automobiles. Actually, just automobiles, from Keeneland yesterday to Camden today. Kicked tires at Keeneland, looking at horses too used or too expensive for our program. Watching the dispersal of the Conquest Stable horses, it was more like a yard sale than an estate sale, strange to see people jump in and jump … Read more

My father kept walking out of the kitchen with another plate. It was 1984, I was 14, in between winning pony races at Far Hills and Pennsylvania Hunt Cup, just a kid, desperate for a place, enthralled by the sport, engulfed by the thought of becoming a jockey.

Keeneland’s fall meet has come and gone. Box fans, rubber matts, webbings and brush boxes line each corner of the stable area this morning. Crossing guards fiddle with their phones, there are few horses coming and going on a sleepy Sunday morning. Larry Jones, still hard at it, rides one home. The track kitchen’s lights … Read more

Road trip. Off to Kentucky to watch Motivational run at Keeneland. We’ve never won a race at Keeneland, a couple of seconds and third (as a jockey and an owner), perhaps, Friday is the day.  Miles is putting his finishing touches on his Halloween costume, Marquis de Lafayette. He could have been anybody or anything … Read more

You need the win. You always need the win. Every horse, every race, you need the win. Whether it’s for the owner, the trainer, the jockey or the job, when you participate in Thoroughbred racing, you need the win. It’s your team, your decisions, the wins can be culmination, reclamation, affirmation or salvation – sometimes all four.

My dad’s first big horse Owhata Chief, winning the Samuel K. Martin in 1979. We called it Essex, it was a good meet, but far from the best meet. That would change.

A quiet, rain-soaked Saturday morning. Quiet house. Horses slogging through the soft turf outside the front window and outside the back window.

Some day, perhaps, I’ll learn to write here every day. Just hasn’t happened yet. I look back and it’s been a week, whoops, the last time I was writing it was about horses running. Now, I’m back a week later, the horses have run, have started back under tack and we are looking at our … Read more

“Cheers Sean…Just got out of op not feeling to bad now!”

That was the text from Jack Doyle, delivered at 12:02 Friday morning, after a crashing fall from Rudyard K in the novice stakes at Belmont Park Thursday afternoon. Doyle suffered two small fractures in the front of his pelvis and a fractured coccyx (tailbone). Atop the standings, Doyle is now grounded with rides like Rawnaq going up in flames, Doyle’s name scratched off today’s overnight like yesterday’s sandwich special.