These are the delicious days, the days of debate and doubt as we wait for the Belmont Stakes, the toughest race to win in the United States and the last leg of the Triple Crown. There is no better time to be a horse racing fan....
Read More
The tack boxes spaced along the shedrow at Barn AA are painted red and blue, the devil's red and deep blue of Calumet Farm's racing silks. These are the colors Whirlaway and Citation carried when they swept the Triple Crown races of 1941 and 1948. They are the colors flown by Pensive and Ponder and Hill Gail and Iron Liege and Tim Tam when those good ones dashed home first in the Kentucky Derby....
Read More
It's hard to find fault in Big Brown's performance here in the Preakness. He was barely asked to run by the jockey Kent Desormeaux and buried an overmatched field. ...
Read More
Rick Dutrow doesn’t mince words. "I think that it’s our race to lose," Dutrow said. "I think that he is the best horse in the race and I think if he breaks with the field, he’ll win the race." He also is right. I'm rooting for Big Brown to pull into Belmont with a shot at a Triple Crown and immortality. ...
Read More
Courtesy of The New York Times Dean Keppler, author of Betting the Kentucky Derby: How to Wager and Win on America’s Biggest Horse Race from DRF Press, discussed his approach to betting the Derby earlier this week. Now with the post positions set, he gives us his picks: 1) PYRO 2) ADRIANO 3) Z FORTUNE For his reasoning and more on how to bet the race, 9- PYRO (6/1) Steve Asmussen’s Pulpit colt was...
Read More
If you watched the Kentucky Derby post position draw Wednesday on ESPN2, perhaps you caught a glimpse of the internationally famous sports artist LeRoy Neiman - how could you miss his mustache? - scribbling away in the crowd....
Read More
The Rail invites readers to submit questions for Joe Drape , The New York Times’s Eclipse Award-winning horse racing writer. To submit a question, add a comment below. Joe will be checking in from Churchill Downs throughout the day Thursday to talk about the Derby field, the draw, workouts and anything else readers want to know about. Have a question about synthetic surfaces ? Want to know more about...
Read More