Bill Mooney examined two tracks on the verge of extinction in New Jersey. “They are situated in their respective locales, approximately 50 miles apart, in the midst of a modern era to which they don’t belong.
Their names are Atlantic City Race Course and Garden State Park. They occupy hundreds of acres in southern New Jersey, and there was a time, not long ago, when they were renowned as two of the finest sports facilities in the East Coast.
Today, Atlantic City more resembles the hulk of an abandoned, decaying ocean liner stranded 14 miles to the west of the largest concentration of casinos on the Atlantic seaboard. And Garden State, just off the Jersey Turnpike in Cherry Hill, once dubbed “the race track of the 21st century,” may not last beyond the first year of the new millennium.”
Atlantic City ran abbreviated meets for more than a decade after the article was written, and closed permanently in January 2015. Garden State closed May 3, 2001.
Despite a fall four months earlier in which he was paralyzed from the chest down, 63-year-old Maryland steeplechase owner/amateur jockey Irv Naylor remained positive when talking with Joe Clancy. Judging by the number of projects Naylor had in the works, many promoting steeplechasing, Clancy noted, “. . . it appears that Naylor’s mind still races at its usual high-rpm rate.”
This past May, seven-time leading owner Naylor became steeplechasing’s all-time leading owner by earnings ($9.06 million), surpassing George Strawbridge’s Augustin Stable.
Inclement weather caused travel problems for several jockeys slated to ride in Mountaineer’s rich West Virginia Derby, among them Mike McCarthy, who missed the call on Robert Meyerhoff’s Stellar Brush. Trainer Richard Small turned to 21-year-old Joe Stokes. Expecting to be a spectator, Stokes stopped by the trainer’s barn simply to say hello and came away with the ride. Besting 10 rivals by 9 lengths, Stellar Brush earned $150,000 of which $15,000 went to Stokes.
Maryland-bred Smart Guy won the 21st running of the $300,000 Pennsylvania Derby-G3. His breeder, James P. Ryan Jr., also bred and campaigned his sire Smarten, winner of the inaugural running in 1979. Purchased by trainer Tim Ritchey for $10,000 at the 1997 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic eastern fall yearling sale, Smart Guy raced for Goodfellas Stables, a partnership of Delaware businessmen Stewart Taub and David Malatesta.
High Yield, the Storm Cat colt whose $1.05 million price at the Keeneland July Yearling sale made him the most expensive Mid-Atlantic-bred sold at auction in 1998, lived up to his name with a victory in Saratoga’s Grade 1 Hopeful. Bred in Pennsylvania by Betty Moran’s Brushwood Stable, the D. Wayne Lukas trainee raced for Bob and Beverly Lewis, Mrs. John Magnier and Michael Tabor.
