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If you are Thoroughbred racing fan and an avid handicapper, it doesn't get much better than what's on tap this weekend. In addition to the four Derby prep races, there are 12 other graded stakes - nine of the coming on Saturday. Fair Grounds' card is spectacular, led by the $600,000 Louisiana Derby, which we covered earlier in the week. Exciting ...

Our sister site, TheHorse.com, features a page of ads to locate homes for ''free'' Thooughbreds. Many are pleasure horses, some are show animals, and a few are mares worth consideration for breeding.  On that site today, I noticed a listing for the 1992 mare Lady Garthorn (pedigree).  ''Lady'' is a stakes-placed winner of ...

By Becky Johnston  How many times do you say ''jock gave my horse a bad ride''?  That's a patent excuse when you don't pick the winner.  I know of what I speak because I am guilty of it.  Have you ever thought about the greatest rides you've ever seen?   You probably see them most often at tracks near you that ...

Plato, who along with Socrates and Aristotle helped lay the foundations of Western philosophy, once said ''A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.'' Here at TrueNicks we could not think of a more apt saying that encapsualtes our common theme of intelligent interpretation of the TrueNicks report. The rating generated is one ...

By Fran Jurga, Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog This photo just showed up in my email a while ago. I thought it was quite beautiful...and even moreso when I realized ''the rest of the story''. This horse's toe crack has been patched with PMMA adhesive, which will harden into a shell-like covering that closely mimics the hoof wall. Plastic wrap is ...

Reader question:  Mr. Gillies - I am just getting  interested in Thoroughbred breeding.  The more I read the more I became interested in rare Thoroughbred lines and out crossing.  I have been reading your blog and just love it.  I have a couple of questions, does it matter if a horse descends from a Northern Dancer say , ...

It is the second week in March, the second Future Wager is upon us, and that means the Kentucky Derby contenders are pretty well established…or are they? That’s what we’ll find out this weekend when the second wave storms the beaches at Fair Grounds, Tampa Bay Downs, Oaklawn Park, and Santa Anita in an attempt to secure a late spot in the Derby ...

My boy Einstein has done it. Become richer, yes, but that isn't my point. He has become a horse of all surfaces by winning the March 7 Santa Anita Handicap (gr. I). Photo: A. Duckworth Caption: Einstein He is a master on turf, a soldier on dirt (winning the grade II Clark Handicap and finishing second to Horse of the Year Curlin in the grade I ...

Last week, the Gotham presented us with a tough set of challenges. This week, the Louisiana Derby makes the Gotham look like an introductory course to handicapping. Easily the most challenging Derby prep race of the season from a handicapping perspective, Saturday's Louisiana Derby is a head-scratcher. On paper, you can make a case for all 10 ...

Before being made available to the public, TrueNicks was tested on a group of more than 100,000 horses. That study firmly established a correlation between a high nick rating and success at stakes level: in fact, while only 13% of the population earned a variant rating high enough to qualify for a rating of A or better, 37% of stakes winners ...