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Whitney Next for Knicks Go, BC Classic a Possibility

With his horse's year having been rejuvenated with a powerful performance in the GIII Prairie Meadows Cornhusker H., trainer Brad Cox is ready to tackle bigger and better things with stable star Knicks Go (Paynter). Cox said Wednesday that Knicks Go will race next Aug. 7 in Saratoga's GI Whitney S., a 'Win and You're In' to the GI Breeders' Cup Classic.

“We always thought that the Whitney was the race we were going to point for this summer,” Cox said. “We felt it was necessary to get a run into him between the Met Mile and the Whitney. Obviously, in the Met Mile we didn't see what we wanted to see, so we thought it made sense to get a run into him.”

It's been an up-and-down year for Knicks Go, who kicked things off with a win in the Jan. 24 GI Pegasus World Cup Invitational S. at Gulfstream. But, he wasn't the same horse in his next two starts, finishing fourth in the $20-million Saudi Cup and fourth again the GI Metropolitan H. Looking back, Cox doesn't think either race was the best fit for his horse.

“You're not going to run in a race like the Met Mile unless you think your horse is training well enough,” he said. “I felt every bit as good going into the Met Mile as I did the Breeders' Cup or the Pegasus. But with the way he ran in Saudi Arabia and in the Met Mile, I no longer have any interest in trying him around one turn any time in the near future. I'm thinking his dull effort in Saudi Arabia and in the Met Mile was due to the one turn.”

Coming back in a month after the Met, Knicks Go took a drop in class when showing up Friday in the Cornhusker, which is worth $300,000 and doesn't ordinarily attract the highest tier horses. While he may not have faced the best competition, Knicks Go could not have been any more impressive. He won by 10 1/4 lengths and earned a 113 Beyer figure, which represents the best figure run by any horse this year.

“It's always great to run in Grade I's and it's great to have horses that are Grade I horses,” Cox said. “He's a Grade I horse. But I do think a race like this one can give the horse confidence and fitness without really getting to the bottom of them. It was a nice race going a mile-and-an-eighth and I think it, being five weeks out, was a nice set up for the Whitney. A race like that can do a lot for a horse. He's a sound, happy horse and we witnessed that last Friday.”

Should Knicks Go stay on course in the Whitney, Cox and his owners will have some tough choices to make. Knicks Go won last year's Big Ass Fans GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile and a return to that race would appear to be in his sweet spot. But Cox has come to believe that Knicks Go can get the job done at a mile-and-a-quarter and is open to the possibility of starting Knicks Go in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic at Del Mar, a richer more prestigious race than the Dirt Mile. He has never run in a 10-furlong race.

“With the way he ran Friday and the configuration of Del Mar, the Classic is definitely in play,” he said. “Both Breeders' Cup races are in play. At Del Mar, we think a mile-and-a-quarter is something he can handle. I think he's a horse that benefits from a shorter stretch. Keeneland has a short stretch when you run a mile there. Gulfstream has a bit of a shorter stretch. There was a shorter stretch the other night at Prairie Meadows and Del Mar doesn't have a long stretch. Those are things we've picked up on over the last year that seem to benefit him.

“He's a horse that doesn't slow down around the turns and that's where he seems to win his races, on the far turn. He can get away from other horses there. And they have to work around the turns to keep up with him. Obviously, with his running style, he saves all the ground around both turns. He's very fast and is able to establish himself early on in a race and save all the ground. He establishes the kind of lead where he is hard to run down.”

As for another big name in the Cox barn, the trainer has no firm plans for two-time Eclipse Award winner Monomoy Girl (Tapizar). She has not started since finishing second in the

GI Apple Blossom H. April 17. Afterward she came down with a case of muscle soreness and was sent to WinStar Farm to recuperate.

“She's back in training at WinStar and she is doing great,” Cox said. “There's no real time frame set so far as to when she will come back to us. But we're all very happy with the progress she has made over the last two months.”

When asked if Monomoy Girl would be ready in time for a fall prep for the GI Breeders' Cup Distaff, Cox replied: “I don't want to put the cart before the horse, but that's possible. That would be if everything goes right.”

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Judge Tells NYRA No on Request for Pre-Motion Hearing

The federal judge in charge of the Bob Baffert vs. the New York Racing Association (NYRA) case told lawyers for NYRA that she would not schedule a last-minute conference the defendant's counsel had requested to discuss a planned “motion to dismiss” filing.

Instead, in a swift and terse reply written shortly after NYRA's July 6 filing, Judge Carol Bagley Amon entered an order in United States District Court (Eastern District of New York) that stated, “Defendant has filed a request for a pre-motion conference. The request shall be taken up at the hearing scheduled for July 12.”

That date next Monday morning is the one the judge had already set last month to hear the civil complaint against the racing association by the barred Hall-of-Fame trainer, who seeks to overturn a temporary ban NYRA initiated against him.

As of 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, NYRA had not yet filed any formal motion to dismiss. On July 6 though, NYRA's attorneys wrote a letter to the court indicating that such a filing was in the pipeline.

On May 17, NYRA informed Baffert that he was temporarily not welcome to stable or race at the association's three tracks (Saratoga Race Course, Belmont Park and Aqueduct Racetrack) because of his highly publicized string of recent equine drug positives.

That ban, NYRA said at the time, would be re-evaluated based on information revealed during the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission investigation into Medina Spirit (Protonico)'s positive betamethasone tests that came back after the colt won the GI Kentucky Derby. In the 12 months prior to Medina Spirit's positive, four other Baffert trainees also tested positive for banned substances, two of them in Grade I stakes.

The gaming corporation Churchill Downs, Inc., has already barred Baffert for a two-year period from its five Thoroughbred tracks.

On June 14, Baffert filed a civil complaint against NYRA, alleging that the association's ban violates his Fourteenth Amendment constitutional right to due process.

On June 30, NYRA filed a 236-page memorandum in opposition to granting Baffert an injunction that would get him back on the track in New York.

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New York Aftercare Day at Saratoga July 21

The New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA), New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (NYTHA), and New York Thoroughbred Breeders (NYTB) will host the inaugural New York Thoroughbred Aftercare Day at Saratoga Wednesday, July 21.

The featured race will be the Rick Violette S., named for the late NYTHA President who spearheaded the creation of the TAKE2 Second Career Thoroughbred Program and TAKE THE LEAD Retirement Program, and was a founding member of the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance (TAA).

“We're proud to carry on Rick Violette's work in promoting and protecting our equine athletes,” said trainer Rick Schosberg, who succeeded Violette as president of TAKE2 and TAKE THE LEAD in 2018.

“The horses give us so much–the excitement of the race, the pleasure of their company, our appreciation of their power and beauty. We owe our very livelihoods to them. It is our duty to make sure they have safe haven when their racing careers are over.”

The New York Thoroughbred industry is a leader in aftercare, donating more than $1.28 million toward racehorse retirement every year.

“New York State is the national leader when it comes to responsibly protecting our retired racehorses,” said NYRA President & CEO Dave O'Rourke. “NYRA is pleased to partner with NYTHA and the NYTB to create a day at Saratoga to honor the hard work of so many involved in thoroughbred aftercare. We look forward to cementing this day as a Saratoga tradition for many years to come.”

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Iconic New York Racing Broadcaster Harvey Pack Dies at 94

Harvey Pack, the engagingly witty curmudgeon who entertained and informed decades of racetrack fans in New York and beyond as a popular radio, television and handicapping seminar host, has died at 94.

Pack's death was confirmed by the New York Racing Association (NYRA), which employed him from 1974 to 1998. Daily Racing Form reported the cause was complications from cancer.

Pack made a lasting impression as a self-deprecating “wiseguy's wiseguy” who passionately advocated for the underdog while never running out of strange-but-true racetrack tales and anecdotes, many of which involved the seemingly universal racetrack desire to gain an edge and cash big (although Pack himself rarely bet more than $100 a race, and often far less than that).

“May the horse be with you!” was Pack's signature signoff to the generations of horseplayers he taught while hosting the nation's first in-depth, analytical nightly race recap show (He came up with that classic tag line by altering the well-known phrase from the 1977 Star Wars film, substituting the word “horse” for the movie's more-famous “force.”).

And each evening's recital of that line after the last race was traditionally accompanied by Pack hurling his program directly at the camera to signify the end of the broadcast–similar to the way a frustrated bettor leaving the track after a losing day might throw down his own program in disgust.

Pack was born and raised on Manhattan's Upper West Side, and he got hooked on the game by his father during racing's golden era, when massive crowds would jam the New York tracks.

According to a 1998 profile of Pack written by Andrew Beyer of the Washington Post, the elder Pack would give his teenage son $10 to go to Aqueduct Saturday morning and save seats for his group of racing pals. Young Harvey instantly grew enamored with the allure of the track, where in the 1940s, Runyonesque characters and noir-laced intrigue lurked around every corner.

WATCH: NYRA's Andy Serling spends “An Afternoon With Harvey Pack”

Pack was quick to pick up on the nuances of both the Racing Form and the sociology of the betting public. When his mother told him that he had “surpassed his father” with his interest in horse betting, Pack recalled to Beyer, “I didn't know if she meant as a handicapper or as a bum.”

Decades later, Pack told the Los Angeles Times, “My father was a degenerate, and I say that affectionately. He went to the track five days a week until he was 87, then cut back to two days a week. I knew then he wouldn't live much longer. He died at 88.”

In 1953, Pack was in the Army and stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey, convenient to Monmouth Park, Garden State Park and Atlantic City Race Course. According to that 1986 Times story, “word somehow spread that Pack had been a professional handicapper, which wasn't true. A handicapper, yes; a pro, no.”

A colonel heard this rumor and summoned Pack. As Harvey told it, the officer was an avid horseplayer too, but couldn't get away to the track as often as he liked. Pack was assigned to run his bets, and even to make some of the selections.

“I'd go to the track on weekdays and then get a weekend pass and meet my friends at Belmont,” Pack said. “When I told them I was going to the track every day, they couldn't believe it. They thought when I went into the Army I'd be fighting in Korea, or something like that, not going to the track.”

For 17 years after leaving the Army, Pack wrote about television for a newspaper syndication service–always arranging his workload so as not to interfere with daily trips to the New York tracks.

Off-track-betting was just coming into vogue in the early 1970s, but horseplayers had no way of hearing or seeing the results. Pack pitched an idea to WNBC radio–he would call race in the manner of a track announcer, but give the entire race and its results in a compact, 30-second burst.

That show, known as “Pack at the Track,” grew so popular that in 1974, NYRA hired him away to be its director of promotions while giving him additional on-air opportunities.

He began hosting the “Harvey Pack's Paddock Club” handicapping seminars, and later the “Thoroughbred Action” and “Inside Racing” nightly and weekly recap shows on SportsChannel in the early days of cable TV. With well-informed race-analyzing guests from the New York press box corps and colorful trainers and jockey agents from the backstretch, those insightful shows were required watching for aspiring racetrack degenerates during a run that lasted through 1998.

During that time, the bald, bespectacled and ever-wisecracking Pack was also hired to be part of the first few Breeders' Cup broadcasts on national TV, primarily to add levity and make bets with a mock bankroll (often making fun of himself when his horses finished up the track).

Beyond New York, Pack had an especially fervent following in New England. When Suffolk Downs in Boston hired him to come up and do a weekend's worth of on-air work on several occasions in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was one of the most popular promotions the track ran all year.

Pack would do his schtick, pose for every photograph, make time for every autograph, and shake every hand. Yet he was also kind enough to take aside the track's younger on-air talent and members of the press box crew to encourage them to forge their own ways in the sport.

In his Post profile, Beyer described Pack as being “ousted” by NYRA in 1998 at age 71 after “top executives informed him…that they wanted 'to go in a different direction.'”

The move wasn't popular. But Pack didn't speak bitterly in public about that decision, nor did he disappear entirely from the New York racing scene. Daily Racing Form hired him to continue to host daily Saratoga seminars for a number of years, moving the location off NYRA's property and to the adjacent Lincoln Avenue watering hole, Siro's.

Pack's NYRA business card once described him as “Doctor of Equine Prophecy,” and fans continued to seek him out to wish him well and pry for tips on hot horses.

Even though Pack knew he couldn't routinely deliver the winners those folks craved, he liked to have a little fun with them. He sometimes told naïve Saratoga racegoers that each day he got an advance script of how the races would turn out, and that it was sitting right on the desk back in his office near the backyard paddock.

More than a few of those wide-eyed casual fans asked if Harvey would let them have a peek at it.

Perhaps in a more practical sense, Pack's followers would have been better off adhering to the more general tidbits of wisdom that he reliably dispensed year after year. If you watched him on SportsChannel growing up, there's no way you can ever forget the mantra-like admonition to, “Never bet a favorite attempting something [i.e., a new distance] it's never done before.”

Often, Pack more bluntly advocated for not betting on the heavy chalk at all: “Hardly is now a man alive who paid the mortgage at 3-to-5,” was another oft-repeated rhyming quip.

“Harvey knew horse racing and made it a lot of fun to watch,” said NYRA broadcast handicapper Andy Serling, Pack's on-air partner for a time and a friend for more than 40 years. “Whether he was on the air or just talking with fans, he connected with everyone and never took himself too seriously. A lot of what we do on the air today goes right back to Harvey. He was the forerunner and a trailblazer in how we cover horse racing today.”

Pack's 2007 autobiography, May The Horse Be With You: Pack at the Track, written with Peter Thomas Fornatale, remains entertaining reading 14 years after its publication.

In a 2018 profile of Pack for Daily Racing Form, Fornatale described how “one afternoon over lunch, I asked him if he had any regrets about his career choices.”

Pack paused, considering only briefly if he'd rather have done something else with his life.

“I wouldn't have been able to get to the track every day,” Harvey mused wryly. “And anyway, I didn't want to work that hard.”

Pack is survived by his wife, Joy; two children, five grandchildren, and one great grandchild. Arrangements for services are pending.

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