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It has been widely believed since his premature retirement that Justify's competition in the Triple Crown was subpar, or let's just say downright weak. Whenever people ask me during or just after the Triple Crown what I think of the crop of 3-year-olds, or whenever they state emphatically it is a poor crop, which many have a tendency to do, I ...

Americans held off the British Navy at Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812. So taken by the skirmish was Francis Scott Key that he took pen to paper and came up with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Straddling the Mason-Dixon line, downtown Baltimore was the site of the first fatalities of the Civil War during the “Baltimore Riots” ...

To follow up on my last column about 9-year-old Eva Lytle and her love for War of Will, there are several ways of instilling the love of horses in children at an early age. Of course, the most obvious is to get them a horse. Bringing them to the racetrack and attending some of the morning programs is another, but that is a longer process. And ...

This year’s Preakness obviously is not going to be an historical gem, at least on paper, considering it not only lacks the Kentucky Derby winner, for the time ever it lacks two Kentucky Derby winners – the one who had it initially and the one who snatched it away from him. And to go one better, of the first four horses who crossed the finish ...

While the heads in the editorial offices of BloodHorse are collectively continuing to spin from the results of the May 4 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1), there are all sorts of other “spin” out there. From Louisville to Baltimore, it seems everyone wants us to show another angle. In the days following the Derby drama of the ...

It had always been hard to believe that in the first 144 runnings of the Kentucky Derby (G1) there hadn’t been an incident on the track that was egregious enough to disqualify the winner. Derby first-place finisher Dancer’s Image’s testing positive for a prohibited substance—phenylbutazone (Bute)—and subsequent disqualification comes to mind, but ...

Several days have passed to allow the Kentucky Derby fiasco to sink in. We have had additional angles of the incident and a variety of opinions, some saying it was the right call and others saying it was a travesty. I guess that’s as far as it will go.I fully understand that some people are going to be outraged by the stewards’ decision and ...

It’s one of the best weeks of the year: the week before the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1). Each year historical stories grow older, and are remembered more fondly. Each year the players (for the most part) get younger, each one burning to make a mark in one of the sport’s most important races. Railbirds on the backstretch in ...

1 Omaha Beach Richard Mandella War Front—Charming, by Seeking the Gold Let’s keep it simple. He was heavily touted in the first Derby Dozen on Jan. 22 while still a maiden, was ranked No. 6 off a seven-furlong maiden win on Feb. 5, and has been No. 1 the past six weeks. He has defeated Bob Baffert’s two early Derby favorites Game Winner ...

This time around it feels different, a lot different. The groundswell is wider; the conviction is deeper. After years of talking and well-intentioned starts that have been met by abrupt reversals, major movers and shakers in the industry—the major track operators in the U.S.—are drawing a line in the sand when it comes to reshaping race-day ...