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(By Avalyn Hunter) I was talking last week to a new coworker, a nurse practitioner who was once a groom in Kentucky. She loved Thoroughbreds then and still does. But she wants nothing to do with American racing. ''A lot of it's the drugs,'' she said. ''They give the stuff to all of them and they don't care whether the horse really needs it or ...

(By Avalyn Hunter) Regardless of temperatures across the country, it's been a hot 2012 so far for recently pensioned A.P. Indy and his sire line. So far, 14 graded classic preps have been run (effectively 15, since the grade III Southwest Stakes was run in two divisions), and six have fallen to A.P. Indy grandsons or great-grandsons: Holy Bull ...

The editors of The Blood-Horse MarketWatch once again are preparing for our annual Broodmare of the Year special report. We've been poring over our notes about a handful of mares that produced 2011's top runners. (A huge data file that we pull each year also brings to light several dams whose accomplishments are worthy of notice.) Every year we ...

(By Lizz Kunz) Dynaformer, who will be 27 when the 2012 Northern Hemisphere breeding season commences, has consistently sired winners of races all across the world since first retiring to Wafare Farm in 1990. While it's no secret that this big bay with an ''I'm boss'' attitude knows how make a determined runner, many in the Thoroughbred ...

Pre-entries to the 2011 Breeders' Cup include progeny of 126 stallions. The Blood-Horse MarketWatch analyzed the recent results of these sires, looking at racing statistics by track surface and by distance categories and separating out juvenile performers in all the data. We ran numbers for the 126 stallions worldwide and also just at ...

Eight years ago The Blood-Horse MarketWatch noted Giant's Causeway's high rankings--second by average and third by median--in a review of leading first-crop yearling sires. Lofty sales prices were no surprise for a Coolmore stud who had been a star entering stallion in 2001. The North American auction results are notable because Giant's Causeway's ...

(By Avalyn Hunter) In perusing this year's sales results and The Jockey Club's 2011 Live Foal Report (free download), one thing stands out: it's tougher than ever to market a new stallion. In contrast to previous years in which youngsters from the first crops of ''hot'' new stallions were in high demand, only one first-year stallion, ...

(By Lizz Kunz) Coolmore Stud's Galileo continues to prove his power as a stallion through his progeny's ability to annihilate competitors on the track. The handsome chestnut Cape Blanco is no exception, a winner of two group I races in Ireland and a grade I stakes in the United States so far, he is a force to be reckoned with on the ...

Last year, Alan, Tom Hall, and I (Scot Gillies) shook up the format of our annual ''Undervalued Sires'' feature to include stallions that offer noteworthy value to commercial breeders and breed-to-race operations in addition to studs that look to offer value at the Keeneland September yearling sale. As the 2011 edition is now approaching, I'd ...

(By Avalyn Hunter) When the board of the Breeders' Cup announced its plans to phase out all race-day medication for Breeders' Cup entrants, discussions sprang up  on media outlets, forums, and blogs across the country.[Read The Blood-Horse editor Eric Mitchell's comments  in this week's What's Going On Here column.] Most of ...