BloodHorse.com

(Originally published in the August 3, 2013 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.) By Eric Mitchell - @BH_EMitchell on Twitter The public outcry over the injury and subsequent euthanizing of grade I winner-turned-claimer Monzante at age 9 shows just how ...

(By Avalyn Hunter) Unbridled's Song has been one of those horses that people seem to love or hate. On the track he was something of an enigma, flashing enormous talent yet never completely delivering on his potential. Although he won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile (gr. I), outgaming Hennessy in an excellent performance for both colts, his 3-year-old ...

Wherever in the world you're breeding, the search for value goes on, and like we did yesterday with New Zealand sires, today we'll take a look at some Australia sires that we think fall into that category. Choisir (AUS) (TrueNicks) (by Danehill Dancer) strikes us as incredible value at Aus$27,500 when compared to some of the unproven, or barely ...

Azamour is an undervalued stallion in Europe, and at NZ$12,000 looks remarkable value in New Zealand. A champion older horse in England and a group I winner at a mile, 1 1/4 miles, and 1 1/2 miles, he has 18 stakes winners in his four crops, including English champion 3-year-old filly Shankardeh, French Oaks (Fr-I) victress Valyra, and eight ...

by Vic ZastThe free tee-shirt crowd was a little late in gathering. Usually by 10:30 AM, the cars are parked up and down East Avenue and by 11:00 AM the fans here for the giveaways have spun through the turnstiles repeatedly. The pitter-patter of raindrops was a detriment to early arrival.  Channel 9 said the chance of precipitation was 100 ...

by Vic Zast Saturday’s card was the best of the new season.  A notable crowd of 25,375 fans witnessed top competition from start to finish.  Three stakes – all graded, an opener that saw the venerable Caixa Eletronica win for the twenty-second time in 65 starts, four long distance turf races and a couple of two-year-old maiden special ...

Friday’s $100,000 Curlin Stakes was created to serve as a little softer spot than Saturday’s Jim Dandy Stakes (gr.II) for three-year-old horses prepping for the Travers (gr.I).  Transparent’s interference on the turn, and subsequent disqualification, had nothing to do with Darley stablemate Romansh’s inability to beat him to the ...

This is an unconventional way to demonstrate how special a horse Unbridled’s Song was, but it still is my main remembrance of the colt, and how brilliantly fast and courageous he was. Because of soundness problems we never got a chance to see just how great a horse he could have been, but we at least got some inclination by the number of ...

You could name many expensive sales horses, brilliant racehorses, or top commercial sires, but it's not often that one horse manages to do everything. Unbridled's Song (TrueNicks,SRO) was that horse, but even better, he did it all with a measure of drama. He was a trendsetter in the sales ring. A $200,000 yearling from the first crop of ...

The good: Social media outlets made the industry aware of a situation that begged for further examination. The bad: Before the facts were gathered, people rushed to judgment with a lynch-mob mentality. Such is the case of Monzante, the grade I stakes winner that broke down at Evangeline Downs during a $4,000 claiming race July 20, and after ...