The Nassau Stakes is one of five graded stakes races July 1 on an action-packed card at Woodbine that also features the Grade 2, $200,000 Highlander Stakes and a pair of races that serve as local steppingstones to the King’s Plate and the Woodbine Oaks.

Michael Blowen glanced at the 1977 Sports Illustrated cover of Triple Crown champion Seattle Slew when it arrived in the mail and immediately discarded it. A horse on the cover of such a prominent magazine?

“I thought thinking of them as athletes was absurd,” he said.

Blowen, then a writer for the Boston Globe, accompanied Bob Taylor, one of his editors, to Suffolk Downs seven years later. The visit to the Massachusetts track was life-changing.