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Since it looks like Blame has edged Quality Road and Battle Plan in our Stallion Pedigree Poll, let's take a look back at Special, Blame's influential third dam. Special (Forli - Thong, by Nantallah) was a full sister to Irish and English Champion Thatch. She made only one racetrack appearance (chart below). On February 24, 1972, at Santa Anita ...

The first day of the Royal Ascot meeting featured five stakes events, four group, and three group I. The highlights were the Queen Anne Stakes (gr. I) for older horses on the straight mile, and the St. James’s Palace Stakes (gr. I) – which our colleague Bill Oppenheim has appropriately called the “European 2,000 Guineas” – for three-year-olds on ...

Four and a half months. Is there any possible way we can make it through that length of time with the nation's top older horses healthy and still racing? Given the fragility of today's Thoroughbreds and the almighty dollar being the ultimate factor in all decisions, the chances of that happening is iffy at best. But if the horse racing Gods let ...

As the sun begins to peek over the Adirondacks, a thin layer of fog still blankets the Oklahoma training track. Cars are pouring into the East Avenue gate to park on the grass near the top of the stretch. Across the street on Union Ave., people have been lined up for hours with their coolers and picnic accessories hoping to get a choice spot, ...

By Alex Waldrop, President and CEO of the NTRA  Sunday night, the NTRA hosted its fifth NTRA Live! broadcast on NTRA.com.  Thousands of people from around the globe tuned in to watch Zenyatta extend her perfect record to 17-0.   Carrying the high weight of 129 lbs., Zenyatta gave everything she had to catch a very game St ...

While the death of Red Ransom was a serious loss to the breeding industry, we take a degree of comfort in his undoubted legacy as a sire of sires and as a broodmare sire. His influence in that first role was underlined over the last two weekends when Snow Fairy, by Red Ransom’s son Intikhab, took the Epsom Oaks, and the rapidly improving Pressday, ...

(Originally published in the June 19, 2010 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.)  By Eric Mitchell “If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere,” former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Handle is the engine ...

Of the following older U.S.-based horses, who has the best stallion's pedigree? Cast your vote and explain your choice in the comments below. Battle Plan is a son of Empire Maker (TrueNicks,SRO) and Champion 2-Year-Old Filly Flanders, making Battle Plan a half brother to Champion 3-Year-Old Filly Surfside. View the TrueNicks report for Battle ...

Saturday in the U.S. saw a potential star among the older horse ranks gain his first grade I, and a slew of events for older fillies. An in-form Rachel Alexandra might have tackled males in the Stephen Foster Handicap (gr. I), but she side-stepped that one, and instead the race confirmed Blame as one of the best of his division. Blame gained his ...