Displaying items by tag: National Museum of Racing

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Daily Racing Form national correspondent Jay Privman and the late turf writers Walter Haight and Jack Mann have been selected to the National Museum of Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor. 

The National Museum of Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor was established in 2010 to recognize individuals whose careers have been dedicated to, or substantially involved in, writing about thoroughbred racing (non-fiction), and who distinguished themselves as journalists. The criteria has since been expanded to allow the consideration of other forms of media. 

Often referred to as the dean of thoroughbred racing writers, Hirsch won both the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Writing and the Lord Derby Award in London from the Horserace Writers and Reporters Association of Great Britain. He also received the Eclipse Award of Merit (1993), the Big Spot of Turfdom Award (1983), The Jockey Club Medal (1989), and was designated as the honored guest at the 1994 Thoroughbred Club of America’s testimonial dinner. The annual Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Invitational at Belmont Park is named in his honor. Hirsch, who died in 2009, was also a former chair of the National Museum of Racing and Halls of Fame Nominating Committee and the founder of the National Turf Writers Association. 

Last year’s selections to the Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor were Pierre “Peb” Bellocq and William Leggett. 

For more information about the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, including upcoming events, please visit www.racingmuseum.org or call 518-584-0400. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame announced May 21 it will cancel the 2020 Hall of Fame induction ceremony and the Museum Ball as a result of the ongoing health and safety concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We are incredibly disappointed we won’t be able to have these time-honored special events this summer, but the health concerns we are facing right now take precedence,” said John Hendrickson, president of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in a statement. “The Hall of Fame ceremony is an experience we want to be able to share with the fans. With racing at Saratoga this summer likely to take place without spectators, we believe it is in the best interests of everyone involved and for the integrity of the event to postpone the ceremony for a year.”

The Hall of Fame ceremony was scheduled for Friday, Aug. 7. This year’s induction class — trainer Mark Casse, jockey Darrel McHargue, horses Wise Dan and Tom Bowling, and Pillars of the Turf Alice Headley Chandler, Keene Daingerfield, Jr., and George D. Widener, Jr. — will be inducted in the traditional manner alongside the class of 2021
next August. 

“The 2020 inductees will be honored together with the class of 2021 next summer in what will be a truly special ceremony,” Hendrickson said. “Being inducted into the Hall of Fame is the most prestigious honor in the sport of thoroughbred racing and we will make sure this year’s class is properly recognized for the incredible mark they have made on the game.”

The 44th Annual Museum Ball, which was scheduled for Aug. 14, is traditionally one of the highlights of the Saratoga summer social season. That event will also return to the calendar in 2021. 

The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame remains closed to the public. The Museum is currently under construction, as work has resumed this week on the new Hall of Fame Education Experience. More information on the reopening of the Museum will be forthcoming.

Photos by SuperSource  Media, LLC. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame staged its 41st Annual Ball at the museum on Friday, Aug. 9, 2019. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS – David Cassidy, the popular singer, horseman and frequent fixture of the Saratoga summer scene who died last year, will be the focus of a dedication ceremony and the placement of two benches in his honor at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

The benches, which will be fixed with nameplates, will be set in the museum’s outdoor courtyard in the spring with a ceremony tentatively slated to take place in late April, said Brien Bouyea, communications coordinator at the Racing Museum, located on Union Avenue opposite Saratoga Race Course.

The singer, who died in November at the age of 67, charted more than one dozen Top 100 hits in the early 1970s, both as a solo artist and in his role as a member of The Partridge Family - whose TV series aired on ABC from 1970 to 1974. The museum neither publicized or solicited donations, Bouyea said. That two benches will be dedicated indicate Cassidy’s wide appeal. One of the memorial benches is the result of donations received from fans around the world; the other a fruit of a collaborative partnering between horse trainer Gary Contessa – who has more than 2,200 winning races under his belt - and Columbia County based horse owner, breeder and veterinarian Dr. Jerry Bilinski.

“We wanted to do something in his honor,” Contessa said, during a phone interview this week. “There were a couple of things we could have done - we thought about naming a race, but then Dr. Bilinski said, ‘you know, why don’t we dedicate a bench to him.’

“With David, we go back 20, 30 years. I play bass guitar so we had a music connection as well as a horse connection, going back at least the early ‘90s,” said Contessa, who fondly reminisced about his first public musical performance with Cassidy.

“He was at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, at a special outdoor thing he was doing under a tent there. I was in the audience when he called me up on stage: ‘I’m going to call up my trainer.’ I was like, holy… It was totally unplanned. He said to me: let’s play a blues in the key of C. I started playing. In the key of A,” Contessa recalled, with a laugh. “All of a sudden he starts looking at me… Nobody loved Saratoga like David did. He had a home in Saratoga, he came to the races every day and he loved the horses. During the meet he could be found at three o’clock in the morning reading the racing form and smoking a cigar at my barn.”