BloodHorse.com

Racing Australia chairman John Messara gave a keynote address during the recent 49th International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. His address focused on the 30-year evolution of racing in Australia and provided some valuable insight for racing industry leaders in North America. Messara, also the owner of Arrowfield Stud, began owning ...

The Breeders' Cup's return to Kentucky later this month, and specifically to Keeneland for the first time, reminds me of a famous quote from Kentucky Gov. Albert B. ''Happy'' Chandler Sr.: ''I never met a Kentuckian who wasn't either thinking about going home or actually going home.'' The Oct. 30-31 World Championships figures to be one big ...

Efforts by casino operators and lawmakers to back away from the original intent of laws that linked approval for gaming to live pari-mutuel racing—some of the legislation has titles that expressly mention preservation of horse racing and breeding—are nothing new. In some states the pushback began only several years after the laws took ...

Mirroring the debate about medication use itself, the Thoroughbred racing industry is sharply divided over ongoing efforts to create a national medication monitoring and enforcement program through federal legislation. Two bills have been filed with Congress, but the proposed Thoroughbred Horseracing Integrity Act of 2015, which is sponsored by ...

Buyers at auction know well that their competition for a horse in the ring is not only from the people sitting around them or gathered near the walking ring. They also face competition from the seller through the reserve price, and this competition is getting stiffer—particularly among select horses—as an increasing number of breeder/owners are ...

Thoroughbred racing in Texas has been going from bad to worse as the racing states across its borders—Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and New Mexico—have steadily grown purses and the value of their state-bred stock through casino gaming. Since 2007 the number of mares bred in Texas has fallen 65% to 814, and the number of active stallions has ...

One of the first rules of Thoroughbred racing is ''they all get beat,'' so while there was a collective groan when Keen Ice rolled past American Pharoah in front of 50,000 at Saratoga Race Course and on a nationally televised broadcast Aug. 29 in the Travers Stakes (gr. I), we shouldn't have been shocked. American Pharoah joins some select ...

In March 2013 eight states in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast—Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia—announced their intentions to adopt uniform regulations governing equine medication rules and drug testing. The effort, spearheaded by the Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, which ...

In the mid-eighties the great Arab sheikhs invaded Kentucky. They came to the sales, bringing with them crusty old British bloodstock advisers, great determination, and untold millions of dollars with which to do damage. They were loaded for bear. The three Maktoum brothers from the United Arab Emirates, along with Saudi Arabia's Prince Khalid ...

The Fasig-Tipton Saratoga select yearling sale is a fickle beast. Predicting how buyers will embrace a relatively small group of handsome, well-bred yearlings is dicier than predicting the winner of the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I) in January. With the benefit of hindsight, however, several signs indicated this year's edition ...