BloodHorse.com

After writing the Hangin' With Haskin column for 12 years and the Derby Dozen, numerous features and columns, and providing lead coverage of all the major stakes for 22 years, I no longer will be writing for the Blood Horse and Bloodhorse.com due to my contract coming to an end. So this is my final column. As most of you know, I ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman While it's always tempting to search for longshots in major stakes races, sometimes the favorites are simply too formidable to play against. Such cases don't require you to take the opposite approach and sink your entire wagering budget into short-priced favorites—the risk vs. ...

It’s a lead to a column that can only make sense in 2020: Never have racetrack executives worked so hard to have 3,546 show up on a meet’s biggest day. Well, that was the case “down the Shore” July 17 at Monmouth Park where CEO and chairman Dennis Drazin and his team worked around the clock to put on a Haskell Stakes day program with fans. In the ...

Let’s look at this year’s Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1) realistically. After the top three it is a study in futility trying to rank the rest of the horses. There simply isn’t enough to go by, as these horses keep beating each other and the vast majority of performances have been fairly ordinary. You have solid horses like Ny ...

With horses sired by the first three finishers of the 2007 Kentucky Derby (G1)—Street Sense, Hard Spun, and Curlin—all still on the Derby trail and with another Derby hopeful having won the Street Sense Stakes, this is a good time to go back and reprint my recap of the 2007 Derby, which has never been reprinted.  The 133rd Kentucky Derby ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman The Road to the Kentucky Derby continues in a big way this week with a pair of important prep races. The Peter Pan Stakes (G3) on July 16 at Saratoga will award 50 qualification points to the winner, while the July 18 Haskell Stakes (G1) at Monmouth Park will double the stakes with ...

Here we are heading to Saratoga with its two important Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1) preps and only days away from the Haskell Invitational (G1). And we still have the Ellis Park Derby, which is likely to attract several Derby hopefuls based in Kentucky. After the top three ranked 3-year-olds - Tiz the Law, Honor A. P., ...

To be honest, we had little idea what would happen when Keeneland announced it would hold a five-day mid-July meeting to take the place of its April program that had been scuttled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While hoping for the best for the one-of-a-kind summer soiree, there appeared to be several obstacles in the way, yet the Keeneland ...

With the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1) being run on Sept 5 this year you would think we would have a firm grasp on who the leading contenders are, but for various reasons-one, of course, being the pandemic-we really don't know who these 3-year-olds are?Tiz the Law and Honor A. P. clearly are the two best 3-year-olds in the ...