The racing season on any track provides rich fodder for writerly types like me. If you keep your eyes, ears and heart open--and, to paraphrase Mark Twain, your mouth shut--you can see and experience things so small and yet so...
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Horse Sense: Find Your Inner Horse
On the eve of the 2009 Saratoga race meet, it's easy to get caught up in the cacophony because, while the pace is hectic--it's the most fun sort of hectic into which the human soul can be thrust. For...
Growing the Sport: What Racing Needs…
This new category is truly an open forum: I'd like everyone who has an opinion--and everyone has one--to write in your comments. Let's start a conversation here. Racing is in dire straits in America, and we all gripe about...
Racing 101: First-Timers’ Guide to the Races
Like most experiences in life, if you try something once and it isn't pleasant--you're not eager to try it again. A day at the races is a wonderful, magical experience--if you have a little heads-up about activities and events. It...
The Starting Gate Crew: the (Sigh…) Cowboys of Horse Racing
People You Should Know This category, "People You Should Know in Racing," is really a subdivision of Racing 101. The people in racing whose jobs we'll discover are essential to the smooth and safe operation of a racetrack, a...
Horse Sense: Stick Your Neck Out!
I have two friends of whom I am very fond, Bella and Madeline. Both are uniquely beautiful: Bella, a dark, sleek brunette, and Madeline, a beautiful redhead, have a lot in common. Both are professional athletes. Both are big, strapping...
Jockeys – All-Time Greats Jean Cruguet
Many people new to racing are unfamiliar with the name of Jean Cruguet, and this is a pity. No, make that a sin. Every year the oft-times fickle racing community falls in love with a potential Triple Crown Winner. ...
Racing 101 It Takes a Village: Getting a Horse to the Track, Part 1
If it takes a village to rear a human child, surely it takes an entire metropolis to get a Thoroughbred to that first race. To the uninitiated, it looks to be a very simple concept: Take a horse. Throw a...
Horse Sense: Pop Stars (Human and Horse), and Lessons on Running Your Own Race
Horses can teach us a great deal about Life: all we need do is observe their lives and listen to their words of Wisdom. The eyes of a horse are the windows into profound insight, if we humans can just slow down...
NYRA Open House: the Perfect Warm-Up to the Meet
Every year, like most Saratogians and all true racing fanatics, I start counting the days--oh, starting the day after Labor Day--'til the next Opening Day at Saratoga. This year's meet opens on July 29th...which is 35 days from...