Year in review: July’s top stories and photos
Girvin (outside) nipped McCraken (inside) and Practical Joke to win the Haskell. Photo By Bill Denver/EQUI-PHOTO.
Starting December 25, we’ll be conducting our own “12 days of mid-Atlantic racing.” Each day we’ll revisit our most popular stories from a given month of the year, and we’ll highlight some of our favorite photographs.
Be sure to check in each day to review what 2017 brought us!
“Bittersweet but excited,” Gabby Gaudet leaving Maryland Jockey Club
In July, Maryland racing analyst Gabby Gaudet announced she’d be taking her annual racing sojourn to work at Saratoga for that tracks late July-early September meet — but with a twist. This time, she said, her career would be heading in new directions, and she would not be returning to her accustomed role in her home state of Maryland.
Frank Vespe talked with Gaudet as she prepared for the next chapter in her career.
“Bittersweet but excited,” Gabby Gaudet leaving Maryland Jockey Club
Ground-up approach has Jomar Torres on the rise
Jockey Jomar Torres had a breakthrough year in 2017. Torres, 22, won 131 races for the season — up from 20 the year before — with purse earnings of more than $3 million.
Doug McCoy profiled a rider who got his start not riding horses — but shoeing them, in his hometown in Puerto Rico.
Pennsylvania equine industry on alert as state budget deadline looms
Pennsylvania’s equine interests had to fight their seemingly annual battle to preserve the sport’s share of alternative gaming revenues. Linda Dougherty outlined a battle that ultimately reached a positive conclusion for the state’s Thoroughbred interests.
Just prior to this year’s Grade 1 Haskell Invitational, Linda Dougherty shared the story of the race’s namesake, Amory Haskell, a man memorialized upon his death as “truly a giant among men.”
Recollection: Songbird start in DelCap recalls 1970s golden era
Doug McCoy recalled the 1977 running of the Delaware Handicap — an epic, down-to-the-wire clash between local favorite Mississippi Mud and Calumet Farm invader Our Mims. That great event presaged recent years, when the best older filly or mare in training almost always makes a stop at Delaware, as Songbird did in winning this year’s DelCap.
July’s photos
