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Photo courtesy Shadwell Stud Distinguished 28-year-old Danzig stallion Green Desert was pensioned earlier this week. Sire of nearly 100 stakes winners, among them 14 group or grade I, he has already made a strong impact as a sire of sires. His best stallion sons include Cape Cross, Oasis Dream, Invicible Spirit, Volksraad, Desert Style, ...

Beau Mistral won the first race at Saratoga for Dave Collins of Lenox, MA.  The two-year-old Irish-bred filly took the opener at Nottingham Racecourse in a simulcasted British maiden race that the fan of international horse racing wouldn’t bet.  “I would never be here if it wasn’t for this,” Collins said about Saratoga Racecourse in ...

No sooner had the Michael Matz-trained Union Rags beat Stat in the Saratoga Special that people started comparing the two-year-old colt to Barbaro.   Matz entered the splendid son of Dixie Union in the grade 2 stakes off one victory in one start, which, in itself, should speak for his respect of the animal’s abilities.  ...

Yearling auctions in upstate New York in early August produced impressive results. Both Fasig-Tipton's Saratoga select sale and New York-bred preferred sale enjoyed gains in their key business figures of gross, average price, and median price. The Saratoga select auction's median of $250,000 equaled the sale record and the New York preferred ...

Blood-Horse Publications and the Thoroughbred industry lost a dear friend this week.If there were a person more open and genuine than Jim Hurst, I haven’t met him or her, and I doubt he or she exists. Jim passed suddenly from this world Aug. 11 and left the staff here at Blood-Horse Publications stunned and saddened. It is hard to wrap one’s mind ...

 After longtime partnership entity Team Valor International won this year’s Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I), it is no surprise that another owners’ syndicate is making a big splash. Blinkers On Racing Stable, based in Northern California and the brainchild of Bay Area resident Scott Sherwood, has a major star on its hands with ...

             Jack Zaraya retired as the Senior Ceremonial Resolution Writer for the New Jersey Legislature and lives in Freehold, N.J.Beginning in the early 1960s, a year-long handicapping contest known as “Broken Downs” was held in the offices of The Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form. ...

In the midst of all the major racing this summer at Del Mar and Saratoga, sometimes the hard-knocking veterans of our sport get lost in the shuffle. One of them is remarkable 6-year-old Star Guitar, a Louisiana-bred who won the $125,000 Evangeline Mile Handicap last weekend for the third consecutive year. Trained by Al Stall Jr. and a homebred of ...

Danzig/Secretariat The great Danzig, who would eventually sire 202 stakes winners (18.8% from foals), didn't take long to prove himself when his first runners hit the track in 1984. His daughter Contredance won the Adirondack (gr. II) and Arlington-Washington Lassie (gr. I), and son Stephan's Odyssey took the Hollywood Futurity (gr. I). But the ...