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It was the fall of 1980. My wife and I were in Paris on our honeymoon, which we scheduled to coincide with the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. One of the horses I was excited to see was the Head family’s magnificent homebred filly Three Troikas, who had captured the previous year’s Arc in impressive fashion, racing in the name of Alec Head’s wife, ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman We’re in the homestretch, folks! With just five weeks remaining until the Breeders’ Cup, the racing action will really heat up this weekend with twelve graded stakes races scheduled to be run, including eight grade Is at Santa Anita and Belmont Park. Among the major names entered to ...

So, is Tonalist better with or without blinkers?Normally, it’s pretty obvious whether blinkers help a horse and if a horse needs them or not. But not in Tonalist’s case. You see, he is two different horses with and without blinkers, but the results are pretty much the same. He wins and loses with them and wins and loses without them. But there is ...

Mirroring the debate about medication use itself, the Thoroughbred racing industry is sharply divided over ongoing efforts to create a national medication monitoring and enforcement program through federal legislation. Two bills have been filed with Congress, but the proposed Thoroughbred Horseracing Integrity Act of 2015, which is sponsored by ...

You can't keep a great sire down.After being shut out in 2015 Breeders' Cup Challenge races through Sept. 6, Galileo saw three of his runners win Challenge races Sept. 12-13: Johannes Vermeer in the Willis Champions Juvenile Stakes (Ire-III), a ''Win and You're In'' to the Juvenile Turf (gr. IT); Minding in the Moyglare Stud Stakes (Ire-I), ...

The gray or roan Frankel colt, Hip 571, walked into the ring with the swagger of his sire, and also his sire's namesake. What an easy sell. You could almost hear the barker calling out: “Come see the first offspring of the most brilliant and explosive horse seen in Europe in many years…Bid on him and bring home a piece of history…Catch a bolt of ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman Get ready, everyone! With just six weeks remaining until the Breeders’ Cup, things are starting to get serious, and starting this weekend, many of the top contenders for races like the Breeders’ Cup Classic (gr. I) and Breeders’ Cup Distaff (gr. I) will be running in their final prep ...

Before the Keeneland September yearling sale became the mother of all sales, there was the Keeneland July yearling sale, which featured the crème de la crème of yearlings in a small but select sale. This was the sale that during the mid-80s boom saw Northern Dancers and Nijinskys going for high seven figures and eight figures, as Sheikh ...

Buyers at auction know well that their competition for a horse in the ring is not only from the people sitting around them or gathered near the walking ring. They also face competition from the seller through the reserve price, and this competition is getting stiffer—particularly among select horses—as an increasing number of breeder/owners are ...