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Transcript is now available, read below or Download a PDF document here. Thank you for your time!   Steve Haskin is an award-winning Turf writer renowned for his Kentucky Derby commentary, with weekly articles, Classic Spotlights, and the ''Derby Dozen'' all found on the BloodHorse.com website's special Triple Crown Mania ...

Champagne Glow, dam of Belmont Stakes winner Ruler On Ice, was in her stall when I arrived at Jim and Pam Robinson’s Brandywine Farm near Paris, Ky. I took their portrait with their dogs Tyler and Einstein. Then Pam and I walked to the barn and the afternoon light was shining through on Champagne Glow, highlighting her beautiful coat. Pam ...

Nice to see experiments with reductions in pari-mutuel takeout, but this one really caught my eye. Mardi Gras West Virginia, a Greyhound racetrack and casino near Charleston, received approval recently to lower the takeout rate on win, place, and show bets from 16.3% to 9.4%. In effect, the rate is similar to that of the rate on video lottery ...

Another Triple Crown is in the books and unfortunately, it yielded us no Triple Crown winner. That much is not a total surprise. What is a bit surprising is that with nearly half of the season gone we are no closer to finding out who is the best 3-year-old in the country. You can make a strong argument that Animal Kingdom was the best horse ...

Originally published in the June 18, 2011 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column. By Evan Hammonds   A soggy Belmont Stakes (gr. I) day and a New Jersey-based longshot winner of the “Test of the Champion” couldn’t dampen the optimism that pervades New ...

 (Originally published in the June 18, 2011 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.)   When Tizway came charging down the stretch in the Metropolitan Handicap (gr. I), his decisive 21⁄4-length victory was a confirmation for veteran breeder Mandy ...

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Incredibly, 2011 was the first time in history that all three Triple Crown races were won by horses with double-digit odds, but longshot or not, siring a classic winner is an achievement not to be taken lightly, especially for a young sire. The chart below shows longshot (10-1 or longer) classic winners since 2000 and the resulting effect on ...

The Triple Crown is a long, arduous grind, with horses shipping to new tracks well in advance, training hard, and racing hard at distances never before attempted.But perhaps no horse in memory has ever made such light work of winning a classic as George and Lori Hall’s Ruler On Ice, whose Belmont Stakes (gr. I) odyssey lasted all of 17 hours. Many ...

Another Triple Crown series is in the books.  Who among us could have predicted during Derby week that the sport’s leading three-year-old stars heading into the second half of the year would be Animal Kingdom, Shackleford and yesterday’s Belmont winner, Ruler on Ice?Belmont Park is to be commended for being such fine hosts to the 55,000+ who ...