Good horses, horsemen and horsewomen come from anywhere. Never was that more evident than this summer at Saratoga Race Course.
Dear steeplechase owners and trainers, you’ve been doing it wrong. Hit the rewind button. Start over. Go back to the proverbial drawing board.
Maybe the horses have this covered. Maybe, if we left it to them, they’d make the right decisions and overcome all of our failures for the good of the game.
No single horse ran in the My Lady’s Manor, the Grand National and the Maryland Hunt Cup timber stakes this spring. It used to be a thing. The old-timers say, “Back in the day, horses were tougher, men were stronger, fences were higher and everybody ran in the Manor, the Grand National and the Hunt Cup.”
Weren’t we just here? The 146th Preakness Stakes, and all its connection to big-time racing, returns to the region, to Maryland, to historic Pimlico Race Course – seven months after the race’s 145th running. That’s right, Covid-19 sent the middle-of-May classic to the beginning of October in 2020.
A photo of a leading Irish trainer sitting on a dead horse, while smiling and offering a peace sign, wound up on the internet. The country’s leading apprentice jockey of 2020 got suspended and fined for riding at a lower weight than published in the program. Racing’s Hall of Fame released a list of finalists that included a trainer with 45 violations on the thoroughbredrulings.com website managed by The Jockey Club. A standout filly won a 2020 Eclipse Award after failing two drug tests.
February can be tough on Matt Dorman. Twenty-five years ago last month, his sister Barbara was murdered. She was 36. Doctors and investigators said her killer was having a psychotic episode when he stabbed her, and later determined that he was insane. He’d been released from a psychiatric hospital without community-based care late the previous year.
Underdog sports teams headed to the playoffs, a big tournament or some important game will frequently proclaim, “We all we got.” And follow up with, “We all we need.”
