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The most disappointed person on the planet when Rachel Alexandra was beaten at the Fair Grounds Saturday had to be Oaklawn Park General Manager Eric Jackson. After the race, Rachel’s owner, Jess Jackson announced that the 2009 Horse of the Year is not in top shape and won’t be taking on Zenyatta in […]

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You might think in the middle of winter, it would be hard to come up with 24 pages of material for a horse racing paper and you’d be wrong. In this issue, we have full coverage of both the O’Brien Awards for harness racing and the Sovereign Awards for the thoroughbreds. Down The Stretch had […]

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We were saddened to hear of the death of multiple award winning photographer Michael Burns, who passed away on Sunday, February 8th at the age of 84. I was aware that Burns was not faring well after speaking with his son Michael a few weeks before the Sovereign Awards. Both of the Burns, Sr. and […]

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I did the daily double, so to speak of the horse racing awards on the weekend - The Sovereigns on Friday and the O’Briens on Saturday. The Sovereigns broke dramatically with tradition by holding their blingfest at the Ultra nightclub in a far less formal environment than we’d been used to. Though the room might have been […]

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It almost sounds silly to brag that you own 1/100th of a horse, but today’s blog is about a guy - i.e. me - who owns 1% of a trotter and because of that, I had a real thrill Saturday night. In the fall of 2008, I acquired one share of a horse named Son […]

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I have been advised that there are pretty good numbers regarding the masses who visit this blog regularly. Not to puff myself up too much, but perhaps some of you have a certain appreciation for solid sports writing. If so, this one is for you. My colleague, Perry Lefko, conducts a Sports Writing course at […]

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Ok, guess I’m still steaming about the selection of Alexandra Wozniak as the winner of the Bobbie Rosenfeld Award as Canada’s athlete of the year. This rant of mine is not meant to demean Wozniak. She’s very much a bright light in the darkness that has been women’s tennis in this country, but in 2009, she did not […]

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Below you will see the voting for the Canadian Athletes of the Year.  Sidney Crosbie was the runaway winner of the Lou Marsh Award and tennis player Alexandra Wozniak was chosen for the Bobbie Rosenfeld bling.  This is a horse racing blog, so when I ask, ‘Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?’ you […]

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Timing is everything in the world of sports. Harness driver Randy Waples hit the winners circle for the 5000th time, but because he did it sometime past 11:00 pm Saturday night, it received all the attention of a Scarborough High School  jr girls volleyball match. Waples steered Keystone Horatio to victory in the 10th race in the […]

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I had multiple reasons for going to Woodbine this weekend. The 25th edition of Down The Stretch, Canada’s most informative and entertaining horse racing newspaper arrived at my door - all 5500 copies of it - Friday morning and that meant, for me, a day of distributing the paper at various locations. Our next issue […]

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