Contrary to upstate news reports, there will be no synthetic surfaces at Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga in the foreseeable future, which includes the lifetimes of your great grandchildren. That’s the good news. From the New York Racing Association’s perspective, there was a bit of more important news...

Chernobyl's Hero made his nineteenth start in the Aqueduct nightcap on Thursday, another attempt to escape the state-bred entry-level allowance condition, another opportunity to earn some money for Russian children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. Since the beginning of the four...

Life in the cradle of political pathos is never quite serene. It goes from one potentially chaotic doomsday scenario to the next, sometimes, as is now the case, week to week. The lawmakers of New York blinked last week when faced with a shutdown of racing at Aqueduct and finally fashioned an agreement...

From San Jose, Costa Rica Seven years ago, a couple of friends, one of whom owned a mare, and I agreed that it would be a good idea to breed a horse, specifically a New York-bred. If we were fortunate and the resultant horse had enough ability to race competitively in New York, the state-bed program...

With the announcement of the Eclipse Award winners late Monday night, the extension of the New York Racing Association franchise due to expire on Wednesday, the remote possibility of a settlement of negotiations between the hostile partisan factions of philistines in Albany, the more likely additional...

A showdown would have been better. A showdown would have made public Sen. Joe Bruno’s nonsensical, irrational stance on franchise issue. Drop the gloves. Lock the gates at Aqueduct. It appears, though, that the politicians have rallied in the eleventh hour and deal is at hand, though it will not be final...