The co-host of the New York Racing Association’s simulcast wagering show, he also co-hosts the prerace "Talkin’ Horses" handicapping segment as well as the "National Racing Report" and "Trips and Traps."
Birthdate: June 11, 1962, in Princeton, N.J.
Family: Single
Got into racing because . . . My dad loved the track, and once he took me to Saratoga Race Track I knew I was home, and I never left.
How tall are you? Not as short as some people think, but not as tall as a regular adult.
During his brief career as a racing analyst on television, former jockey Johnny Sellers would drink two beers before each broadcast.
“Two Heinekens,” said Dave Johnson, who worked with Sellers. “Never more than two. But he had to have those two.”
Charlsie Cantey, who did racing telecasts on and off horseback for 30 years after riding steeplechasers and show jumpers, used beta blockers, similar to what golfers take to cure their putting yips, before many of her shows.
The Breeders' Cup will return to Santa Anita Park in Southern California in 2012, three years after the track hosted consecutive editions of the event, Breeders' Cup announced on Wednesday.
The two-day event will be held on Nov. 2-3, Breeders' Cup said. Santa Anita, which hosted the Breeders' Cup in 2008 and 2009, was selected as the host site over two other tracks, New York's Belmont Park, which last hosted the Breeders' Cup in 2005, and Kentucky's Churchill Downs, which was the host for the 2010 event and will be the site for the event later this year.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Allen Jerkens beat Kelso with Beau Purple, and, famously here at Saratoga, knocked off Secretariat with Onion, but ask him who the best horse is that he ever trained, and he’ll quickly answer Sky Beauty.
“She’s in front of all of them,” he said at his Saratoga barn on Wednesday morning. “Devil His Due, Beau Purple, Missy Mirage, and Classy Mirage, November Snow. She was sheer class.”
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – After a delay of several years, more than $140 million collected from four casinos became available to the Illinois racing industry as of midnight Monday. But after being split between Standardbred and Thoroughbred tracks, and cut again between track operators and purse accounts, the money is unlikely to fundamentally alter the state’s racing landscape.
The Travers at the end of the month will go a long way toward settling what is still a wide-open race for best 3-year-old male of the year. Here's a look at how the race stands after the Triple Crown season, the Haskell, and the Jim Dandy for the top contenders in Mike Watchmaker's latest divisional ratings.
Watch the replays and cast your vote.
MIAMI - Trainer Thomas Heard Jr., a regular on the south Florida circuit for many years, died at the age of 93 in Texas on Aug. 4.
Heard, a native Texan, began his training career in New England in 1938 following the retirement of his father, Thomas Heard Sr. His first stakes winner came that year at Suffolk Downs with Be Blue in the Commonwealth Handicap.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Churchill Downs Inc. will open a call center for its account-wagering operation in Amherst, N.Y., according to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and racing officials, in a move designed to relieve political pressure on a Churchill customer, the New York Racing Association.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Turbulent Descent, the dominating winner of the Grade 1 Test Stakes for 3-year-old fillies here at Saratoga on Saturday, may not start again until the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint three months from now at Churchill Downs, trainer Mike Puype said Sunday.
