BloodHorse.com

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman On a very quiet weekend of racing with only one graded stakes race on the agenda, the event that Kentucky Derby-minded handicappers will want to keep an eye on is surely the $75,000 Sugar Bowl Stakes at Fair Grounds. The six-furlong sprint for two-year-olds serves as a steppingstone ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman With five wins in the Kentucky Derby (and two sweeps of the Triple Crown) since 1997, it's safe to say that no trainer in recent memory has dominated the spring classics quite as thoroughly as Bob Baffert. Nor does it appear that Baffert's string of success will end anytime soon. In ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman The Road to the Kentucky Derby continues on Saturday with the $300,000 Los Alamitos Futurity (gr. I), a very productive 1 1/16-mile event at Los Alamitos that has been won over the last ten years by such high-class colts as Pennsylvania Derby (gr. I) winner McKinzie, Metropolitan ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman The Road to the Kentucky Derby continues on Saturday with the $250,000 Remsen Stakes (gr. II) at Aqueduct, a unique race that provides the only opportunity for North America's future Derby contenders to contest a nine-furlong graded stakes race during their two-year-old season. It's ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! On this busy weekend of racing—arguably the last really big weekend of the year—there's graded stakes action from coast to coast and lots of high-class action to analyze. But since we're already happily trekking down to the Road to the 2019 Kentucky ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman On this fairly quiet weekend of racing, I imagine that most of us are already looking ahead to the 2019 Kentucky Derby and are busily analyzing race entries and results in search of promising two-year-olds who could make a big impact on the Derby trail this winter. So with this in ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman It's not every week that I single out a listed stakes race as the feature race for an Unlocking Winners blog post, much less a rather obscure one-mile turf race at Aqueduct on a quiet weekend in November. But when I examined the entries for the $150,000 Artie Schiller Stakes—a race ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman Get ready, everyone! The 2018 Breeders' Cup World Championships at Churchill Downs kick off tomorrow afternoon, and in preparation for the two fantastic days of racing, I've compiled what might be the longest Unlocking Winners blog post of all time—some 6,500 words analyzing all ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman We all know how dominant European shippers have been in the $1 million Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf (gr. I), and we all know that among the European shippers, those trainer by Ireland's Aidan O'Brien have enjoyed particularly spectacular success. Just look at the numbers—horses that ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman The recent announcement that the two-time Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (Fr-I) winner Enable will travel to Churchill Downs to contest the Breeders' Cup Turf (gr. I) has caused quite a stir among handicappers and racing fans. Enable's brilliant form in Europe ensures that she'll start as ...