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By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman Arguably the best race of the summer at Saratoga is coming up on Saturday, that being the $1,250,000 Travers Stakes (gr. I). The 1 ¼-mile ''Midsummer Derby'' is something like an unofficial fourth leg of the Triple Crown, frequently pitting some of the best three-year-old colts in the ...

Major league sports—and the way we experience them—have changed dramatically since the inception of the Breeders’ Cup in 1984. Larger stadiums have given way to smaller venues. What was once a game is now a multimedia spectacle with music, short-burst entertainment, and advertising filling the void between quarters, innings, matches, and time ...

No major stakes has undergone more changes than the Woodward Stakes, once regarded as the maker of champions, as it often was in the Woodward Stakes that horses clinched Horse of the Year honors. Inaugurated in 1954, it has been run at three racetracks – Aqueduct, Belmont Park, and Saratoga, the last its home since 2006. It has been run as a ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman Since this article is a preview of the $1 million Pacific Classic (gr. I) at Del Mar—arguably the most anticipated and prestigious race of the weekend—I suppose it would make sense for me to begin with an explanation of why #5 Accelerate is clearly the horse to beat. Then again, isn't ...

Sometimes racing is a game of repetition. This past weekend at Saratoga Race Course, a pair of New York-breds won the two graded stakes on Aug. 11—much as they had done the previous weekend when Diversify and Mind Your Biscuits ran 1-2 Aug. 4 in the grade 1 Whitney Stakes and Sandy’z Slew took the following day’s Troy Stakes (G3T). This time ...

All of Chad Summers’ horses had their heads out the stall anxiously awaiting dinner. One was pawing the ground, some were nickering, some were squealing. Well, all but one. In the end stall, Mind Your Biscuits had other things on his mind. The seventh race was going off and he peered intently out the back window taking in all the action. Even ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman The $1,000,000 Arlington Million (gr. I) at Arlington Park has long been among the most prestigious turf races in North America, and while you can argue that competition from other rich races has caused the Million to lose a bit of its luster in recent years, you wouldn't really know ...

Now that Saratoga is settling into its more traditional “August Place to Be” mode, we’re finding it is pretty fertile hunting ground for New York-breds. The one-two finish in the Aug. 4 Whitney Stakes (G1) by Empire State-breds Diversify and Mind Your Biscuits is testament to that. The program got another lift the following day when state-bred ...

They used to be scoffed at. There was a time when you heard the name New York-bred, you thought of second-class citizens not even remotely classy enough to compete with the big-name Kentucky-breds and Florida-breds or even worthy of being mentioned in the same breath. New York-bred races were looked upon as nothing more than claiming races without ...