BloodHorse.com

The runners embarking on the 2018 Kentucky Derby trail, have gathered, like the massive throng on the Verrazano Bridge before the start of the New York Marathon, and they are now five days into their annual assault on Churchill Downs that will involve four months of blissful torture for owners and trainers who envision the blanket of roses ...

Boy, do we have some amazing 50th anniversaries in Thoroughbred racing to look forward to in 2018; anniversaries of some of the greatest horses in history, some of the most amazing performances, and certainly one of the most controversial stories of the century. Many of these will be addressed in columns throughout the year. To put everyone in ...

With a pretty robust year behind us, we have to think there is plenty to look forward to for 2018. Despite frigid temperatures here in the Bluegrass to kick off the new year, the upcoming mixed sales at Keeneland (Jan. 8-11), Ocala Breeders’ Sales (Jan. 24-25), and Fasig-Tipton Kentucky (Feb. 5-6) figure to continue to bring the heat generated ...

Kentucky humorist Irvin S. Cobb famously bragged: “Until you go to Kentucky and with your own eyes behold the Derby, you ain’t never been nowheres and you ain’t never seen nothin’.” Ask any horsemen, however, and they’ll tell you they’ve seen plenty. But just when we think we’ve seen it all, 2017 rolled in. The year certainly showed us some things ...

Horse racing, like most sports and businesses, has issues it must deal with and work out. And we are all aware of the criticism the sport often gets, especially from uninformed entities such as PETA, who never take the time to scrape off the hardened crust they see and look beneath it to discover the soul and the love of the horse that has ...

An interesting news item appeared on BloodHorse.com the afternoon of Dec. 3 after the grand mare Stellar Wind had appeared on the Palm Meadows Training Center’s worktab. The champion 3-year-old filly of 2015, whom we assumed had ended her racing career Nov. 3 with an eighth-place finish in the Longines Breeders’ Cup Distaff (G1) before selling for ...

It is that time again to get up on my lonely pulpit and preach to deaf ears. Yes, it is almost time to embark on the Kentucky Derby trail, and with the recent announcement that top 2-year-old Bolt d’Oro is scheduled to make his 3-year-old debut in the seven-furlong San Vicente Stakes, what better time to try yet again to force feed the concept ...

Robert Courtney Sr., who left us last week at 96, is celebrated not only for his long and distinguished career as a breeder and horseman, but as somebody who was always willing to help the next guy. Courtney had a way with words, every sentence holding pearls of wisdom. “Courtneyisms,” is what Alex Rankin, one of Courtney’s protegés, calls them, ...

It was the winter of 1986, and I was in a major lull in my potential writing career. Still toiling aimlessly in the library of the Daily Racing Form after 18 years, I had stopped writing freelance features for the Thoroughbred Record. In addition, Stud & Stable, England’s version of the Blood-Horse and Thoroughbred Record where I had been ...