This article first appeared in Blood Horse magazine on September 9, 2000. Let's make a horse racing movie. You know, the kind they used to make in the 1940s and ‘50s. It doesn't matter if the plot is implausible. People love this kind of stuff. First we need a girl. There's always a girl, one who loves horses, having been around them all her life. What better choice than Linda Rice, who comes from...
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It was August 17, 2014 and Sol Kumin and Jay Hanley couldn't have been more thrilled. They were about to see the immediate results of their recently formed partnership. Hanley, a building contractor who previously had owned one New York-bred filly, had built a summer house for Kumin on Sheep Pond Road on Nantucket Island and the two soon became friends and decided to buy some horses together. Hanley...
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If John Henry had one positive trait, it was his ability to touch people's lives. Of course, everyone knows how John affected the lives of Ron McAnally and Sam Rubin, but no one's life was affected more by the horse than Phil Marino's....
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I have posted photos of Secretariat over the years, including a collection of shots seven years ago, but never all of them in one place. I figured it was time to put all these photos together in a single blog, just to have them archived and easily accessible....
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It was 1973, and America was desperately looking for a sports hero. By June they had found one in the form of a flashy powerful chestnut horse named Secretariat, who was so popular he appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek , and Sports Illustrated in the same week. And this was before his iconic procession into history in the Belmont Stakes, in which he became the first horse in 25 years to sweep...
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When Diane Nelson passed away on July 5 at age 54, her days riding regularly on the tough New York circuit were long forgotten by many. But those who followed racing in the Big Apple on a daily basis remember her as a top rider, who like so many females before her, was never given the opportunity to ride world class horses and compete in championship races on a regular basis. Nelson is remembered as...
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Could it be that we actually saw the Travers winner, or at least a major threat in the Midsummer Derby, compete on Saturday?...
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The more Arrogate accomplishes, the more we want to see if he can top it. Unlike the vast majority of today's champions, we want to know just how high a ceiling our champions have, as we saw years ago when horses ran every two to three weeks and kept piling new feats on to their record....
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It didn't take the M.C. Hammer long to make a major impact on the sport with the exciting filly Lite Light, who surged into national prominence that year by capturing in succession the Las Virgenes Stakes, Santa Anita Oaks, Fantasy Stakes, and culminating with a 10-length romp in the Kentucky Oaks....
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