Sabrina and Angie Moore, the women behind Maryland’s GreenMount Farm, looked like they’d run a marathon after watching Knicks Go – a horse Angie bred and her daughter Sabrina raised – solidify his spot atop the list of the best Thoroughbreds in training in 2021 with a victory in the 94th Whitney Stakes-G1 at Saratoga Race Course Aug. 7.
Nestled between the big screen television and The Stronach Group’s tent, the historic horse and rider weathervane sits quietly atop its cupola in the Pimlico Race Course infield. Five feet wide, and made of aluminum, it’s coated in 55 years of Preakness history, paying tribute to each winner since 1966 as a replacement for the original. That iron piece lived on top of Pimlico’s clubhouse from 1909, when the tradition of painting the winning silks began, until it was damaged when the old clubhouse burned down (don’t worry, it’s in the track museum).
Michael McCarthy leaned on the fence outside the stakes barn at Pimlico Race Course. The trainer finished a Preakness Week 2021 television interview, took a break from his insistent phone and replied to a question about his runner Rombauer with a simple, “We can go see him if you want.”
Danny Lopez watched the last few strides of Chub Wagon’s latest tally, shook hands with his trainer, accepted a few congratulations and went back five decades.
Two weeks before the most important timber race in the world, while still enjoying the My Lady’s Manor victory by his horse Vintage Vinnie (Ire), trainer Joe Davies contemplated the next step.
For five glorious weeks in the spring of 1971 – 50 years ago now – an unlikely trio of men from Venezuela chased the Triple Crown and almost won it with a horse hardly anyone had heard of on Kentucky Derby Day.
Where do you want to start with Street Lute? Winning seven of her first eight starts? Her eye injury? Her owner, a guy who probably doesn’t quite understand how lucky he is? Her unraced dam’s path from the auction ring to riding horse to a date with a champion?
Matt Dorman’s best day as a handicapper came at the 2015 Breeders’ Cup, when he hit the pick four. Found (Ire), 6-1 winner of the Turf-G1, helped fuel the big payout and Dorman remembered that day as he signed for a $300,000 yearling filly out of Found’s full-sister at Keeneland September last year.
You might as well start at the beginning. A conversation about West Virginia-based stallions starts with Fiber Sonde.
The 16-year-old will stand his 13th season at John McKee and Cyndy O’Bannon’s Beau Ridge Farm in Kearneysville, and will no doubt be in demand again given that he led pretty much every statistical category in 2020 and held his own in the region and beyond with 53 individual winners from 96 starters. The half-brother to $90,000 Kentucky stallion Speightstown will stand for $1,000. McKee knows that’s a bargain, but also manages his stallion’s book carefully.
