SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - They're still talking about the remarkable stretch run of Monday's $150,000 Adirondack Stakes and the courage displayed by the dueling principals, the victorious You and the gallant runner-up, the 3-5 Cashier's Dream.
The 86th running of the Adirondack was so compelling that it will forever be a point of reference and will be described as one of the finest 2-year-old races ever run at old Saratoga.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Some horses are simply a pleasure to behold. El Corredor is definitely one of them.
He is built like a swimmer - 50-meter freestyle - with long, smooth muscles ready to twitch like mad at a moment's command. His stride is mechanically flawless. There is no wasted motion, not a calorie burned in vain. Every time he runs, the machinery hums and the results seem preordained. Too bad we only get to see him once in a blue moon.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - A victory in a Grade 1 stakes is prized by racing men everywhere. With Anticipation, owned by Augustin Stable, was disqualified and placed second for drifting in the stretch in last month's United Nations Handicap at Monmouth Park, prompting trainer Jonathan Sheppard to wonder if With Anticipation, a 6-year-old gelding by Relaunch, would ever win in Grade 1 competition.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - The Travers for 3-year-olds has been Saratoga's signature race since opening day in 1864, but the Alabama for 3-year-old fillies has produced a good deal of outstanding sport and occasionally overshadows the colts' race.
Calumet Farm's Twilight Tear, one of the greatest fillies to run in this country in the 20th century, was 1-20 in the Alabama of 1944. She got in a speed duel with Thread o' Gold, however, and the latter's stablemate, Vienna, came on to win, just as planned by trainer Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons.
Everyone seems to have an opinion about who should run New York's racetracks and New York City's offtrack betting network. Frank Stronach, whose Magna Entertainment submitted a "winning" bid for OTB in a sale unlikely to be approved, has now broadened his horizon and says he also wants to run Aqueduct, Belmont, and Saratoga. He thinks the "clubbiness" needs to be removed from the power structure and that the game needs "jazzing up." The allegedly clubby and unjazzy New York Racing Association wants to keep control of the tracks and add OTB to its portfolio.
WASHINGTON - For Travis Dunkelberger, Wednesday began as a typical day - a grueling one. Any jockey who wants to be the top race-winning rider in America has to work hard.
With four mounts on the opening-day program at Pimlico, Dunkelberger lost with his first three, but he captured the last race aboard a claiming horse named Torch the Halls. It was his 258th victory of the year, and put him one victory ahead of his friendly rival and fellow Marylander, Ramon Dominguez.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - The geriatric set commands the spotlight in Saturday's $500,000 Sword Dancer Invitational, with the 10-year-old John's Call, 7-year-old Honor Glide, both former winners of this race, plus the 6-year-old With Anticipation among the leading contenders in the demanding 1 1/2-mile test on the turf course.
DEL MAR, Calif. - It might have been the heat, or it might have been the water. But I will swear on a stack of Fasig-Tipton catalogs that it was Howie Tesher I saw petting two llamas beneath the shade of an elm tree on Phila Street in Saratoga Springs the other day.
PHILADELPHIA - Any out-of-town horseplayer who walks into the Center City Turf Club is likely to ask the same question: Why doesn't every city have something like this? People from Maryland surely will wonder why their state's racetracks haven't erected a similar offtrack betting facility in downtown Baltimore, Washington, or Bethesda.
WASHINGTON - Rick Englander's ambitions were modest when he indulged his lifelong passion for horse racing and claimed a mare at Laurel Park for $14,500. "I hoped," he said, "to get a winner's-circle picture and a pass to the track." That transaction in late 1998 was unremarkable - Englander never won a race with his first horse - except for one thing. It marked the beginning of an almost unprecedented success story.