BloodHorse.com

Too bad that Steve Byk’s many fans aren’t able to see him.  The daily radio voice of horse racing is one of the best dressed men at Saratoga Race Course.  He’s on the Beau Brummell list with Cot Campbell, D. Wayne Lukas, Michael Veitch and, of course, Barry Schwartz.Dressed in a subtle plaid tan and charcoal grey sport coat with white ...

Bernadette Bachman of Hauppauge, Long Island has seen every race at Saratoga Race Course in the last 15 years.  You would call her the super-fan, if you measured her value to NYRA by attendance. But there’s a catch. “I’m a very bad handicapper, and so I don’t bet,” the petite, blonde-haired regular confessed. This isn’t good when racetracks ...

Whoever is scheduling the races is obviously not impressed with the North American tradition of placing the stakes race near the end of the card.  On Sunday, the Yaddo Handicap was run as the fourth race and the West Point Handicap as the seventh.  There were 11 races in all.On Monday, the $80,000 Troy Stakes for 4-year-olds and upward ...

Sgt. Jeff Cohen, a retired New York City police officer who recently began a second career as a postal delivery employee, is able to come to Saratoga Race Course only once or twice a week.  Often, he brings his young son Artie along, and Artie, an admirably polite red-haired lad, spends the day eating popcorn and ice cream while his father ...

Give Sonny Taylor a minute to say something, and an afternoon will pass by before he comes up for air.  Yesterday, the 71-year-old African-American placing judge, who is a friend to just about everyone, came down from the track’s upper echelons to mingle with the minions on the Turf Terrace. Among the luncheon munchers, Taylor told endless ...

Saratoga was still stirring from Michael Vincent Magnier’s $2 million winning bid on a Storm Cat colt at the yearling sales when Amtrak’s Adirondack arrived on Wednesday morning an hour and a half late from New York. Trains departing Penn Station are usually on time.  The trains coming down from Rutland, Vermont or Montreal, Quebec heading ...

In the morning, the National Museum of Racing enshrined six new members into the Hall of Fame.  In the afternoon, the track came alive with lucrative longshots and people watching.  Fasig-Tipton Company held the first of two evenings of yearling sales when twilight descended.  How much better can the sport entertain?Jockey Edgar ...

It’s not only the thousands of fans that are missing each day from the racetrack that has Saratoga troubled.  That some Saratoga mainstays are missing persons is also a concern.Take Mitch at Large, for example. Horseplayers hitting hard times used to find humor in his vignettes on the track’s video messaging boards and closed circuit ...

Thursdays are the days the steeplechase horses compete.  On this Thursday, only three races on the card were worth watching, and the first race – 2 1/16 miles over nine fences, with many quondam flat runners – was a fun one. The Price of Love, a 5-year-old gelding trained by Jonathon Sheppard, executed a clever inside stretch move at the ...

The Reading Room was every bit the Pump Room when Liz Tippett used to drive to the Union Avenue clubhouse for lunch in “The Outlaw,” her lavish, black and yellow, horse-drawn road coach.  It isn’t that any longer.Yet, Cot Campbell has enough of old-school savoir faire to make even a catered afternoon one of the classiest Saratoga ...