The Outside Rail
Contributions from TIHR co-founder, editor and writer Joe Clancy.
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November 27, 2018
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Joe Clancy
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop . . . the hoofbeats closed in as I crossed Union Avenue toward the Oklahoma stable area at Saratoga Race Course. About halfway across, I looked back and a big-but-little bay horse was on my heels and closing in.
He reminded me of a first-grader at recess on the first day of school. Unsure. Shaky. Lost in a “I've-never-been here-before” way.
“Come on, you can do it,” I found myself instinctively saying.
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July 6, 2018
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Joe Clancy
Dennis Forney. Trish Vernon. Vicki Davis. Mike Short. Lon Wagner. Kathy Emery. Gina whose last name I can’t remember. Deny Howeth. Chris Wildt. Cat Tanzer. Don Herring. Terry Peddicord. David Healey. Adam Wolle. Bill Hughes. Cheryl Mattix. Jon Springer. Drew Ostroski. Jeff James. Jeff Swinger. Butch Comegys. Anthony Farina. Jim DeCourcy. Wendy Gilbert. Joy whose last name I can’t remember. Craig Horleman. Jeff Gentry. Jane Thomas. Barb Tidman. And . . .
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June 14, 2018
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Joe Clancy
I owe my career to Gene Weymouth. No, really. Well, kind of. And if you spit out your coffee at that statement I’m sorry. Get a napkin.
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January 16, 2018
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Joe Clancy
Creased, scratched, faded, turned up on the corners and with a dime-sized hole in the center of the cover photo, the magazine saw plenty in its 44 years. But nobody had seen it for five years, maybe more, until Jack Clancy opened a plastic container in an unused room in my Fair Hill office last month.
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January 13, 2018
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Joe Clancy
Back in the 1980s at the University of Delaware’s student-run newspaper The Review, I didn’t cover the football team. I went to field hockey games, lacrosse games, the occasional baseball game, a basketball game or two (the team was usually woeful), some wrestling matches, a few swim meets.
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December 31, 2017
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Joe Clancy
Abstain, abstain, abstain.
If you’re paying attention to Eclipse Award votes this time of year, you’ll read that a lot. Voters and other interested racing fans will post their ballots for Thoroughbred racing’s annual championships and many will decline to vote in the champion steeplechaser category (instead typing Abstain in the first, second and third choice boxes). Not everyone, but many. The abstentions topped 40 individual voters in each of the past three years and will likely do so again this time around.
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November 28, 2017
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Joe Clancy
“Hi, I’m calling to order my calendars. I order them every year from you. You should know who I am and have all of my information.”
“I only need one this year. The person I bought the second one for passed away.”
“My mama drank tequila when she was pregnant with me, so I don’t hear so well. Can you speak up?”
“My friends owned some horses in California. I was their official jockey hugger. Now that was a good job.”
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August 31, 2017
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Joe Clancy
They weren’t missing this one, not this year. And maybe not ever.
Brent and Carol Johnson turned up in Saratoga Monday to present the trophy for the Better Talk Now Stakes two months after the race’s namesake – and the best horse they ever owned – died of colic at age 18. Retired in 2009 after 51 starts and 14 wins including the 2004 Sword Dancer Invitational at Saratoga Race Course, Better Talk Now was part of the Johnson family. And they miss him.
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August 6, 2017
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Joe Clancy
Months ago, Mimi Voss asked me to make an introductory speech about Tom Voss for his Hall of Fame induction. I told her I’d be honored – then started sweating. It went off without a hitch (or many hitches) Friday, but I pretty much stuck to the abridged version. Here’s all of it, or most of it, from a Word doc on my computer labled simply, “Voss.”
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July 22, 2017
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Joe Clancy
As my journalism professors told me it would, a pencil saved me as I scribbled down some observations. I’m sure I still have the notebook (because I hardly ever throw those things away), but I’m not sure where it is. The notes would have been difficult to read, and would have gone something like this:
