Been paying attention to what's going on in the Empire State lately (er, you might know it as New York)? We speak not of the mess in the Governor's Mansion or resulting headlines and cable news rumblings. Rather, we refer to the status of registered New York-breds, exploits of which are tickling the fancy of [...]

Like tens of thousands of racing fans in the Northeast, I became addicted to Harvey Pack when he began broadcasting his “Pack at the Track” radio program during the 1970s. Anyone who could get away with the kind of the totally 'Noo Yawk' attitude he put forth in a sport that always prided itself on [...]

The disruptions prompted by the coronavirus pandemic have messed with the Thoroughbred industry's decades-long racing, sales, and breeding schedules. However, some of us who subsist on data and are under social distancing now have some time to explore the less obvious trends that might be going on by plumbing various databases–in our case, the breeding [...]

The most frequently asked question your correspondent and his associates answer about biomechanical efficiency is (paraphrased) “What component, or combination of components, of a horse's mechanics other than speed is most likely to tickle your fancy?” After almost 40 years of evaluating thousands of horses from four continents this is how we answer the question [...]

Historians are most likely to agree that the 1850s were probably the true beginning of the immigration era in the United States. Not only was this the decade in which the Irish made their first forays to this these shores due to the potato famine, but also the Germans began to flock here to be [...]

Yes, the French have a word–or a couple of expressions–for it and Hollywood has gotten into the act. And while these days there are fewer of us who know the precise definition of plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (“the more things change, the more they remain the same”) or even of deja [...]

There are several companies or individuals who provide services that, in the end, use the data gleaned from an ultrasound to project in one way or another potential racing success. We provide data obtained when a Thoroughbred's heart is scanned with an ultrasound computer and measurements are taken of its body mass to determine an [...]

Like many a 6-year-old in 1951, your correspondent's world was suddenly turned upside down with the arrival in our family apartment in Queens of a strange piece of furniture with a window which, when clicked on, brought up all sorts of things from movies to newscasts to baseball games and something called I Love Lucy. [...]

Because it's a synthetic track, one cannot exactly say that the “dust” has settled from the exuberant show that the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company put on at the first 2-year-old sale of the season earlier this month. But if observers and stat mavens thought there was a bit of a “bounce” in the surface, they've [...]

My cohorts Jay Kilgore, Frank Mitchell and I had the distinct pleasure and honor of being introduced to Harvey Clarke by his major domo Steve Shahinian several years ago and we were among the lucky to have been in his orbit. He had an unerring dedication to quality and a calming attitude which belied his [...]

Let us not take anything away from Accelerate's smashing victory in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic–he was a worthy and basically easy winner. Yet there was a horse missing from the starting gate who might have had some kind of impact on the event because he could have outrun the early leaders and then maintained [...]

In 1972, I owned a fledgling public relations firm in New York City which had most of its clients in Atlanta, mainly because my silent partner lived and worked there and recommended our services. One day he called and told me that there was a man I needed to see because he needed our public [...]