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Previously in this blog we had commented about the strange fact that despite standing at the same farm in Australia, Giant's Causeway never received as many Danehill mares as one would have thought reasonable. By our count, Giant's Causeway has only 16 named foals out of Danehill mares, a stunning number when you consider that Giant's Causeway ...

With the Golden Slipper now just two weeks away, Arrowfield Stud's Flying Spur (AUS) has given himself another live shot at winning the race after his grand looking son Krupt (AUS) won the Todman Slipper Trial (Aus-II) at Canterbury racecourse over the weekend. An AUS$450,000 Easter Yearling purchase by trainer Matthew Smith, Krupt heads into ...

Over the last 50 years, racing has trended towards ''speed'' to the detriment of ''stamina.''  The obvious casualty of the speed bias is non-sprint race distances. And over the past half-century, we've seen more and more tracks re-defining their signature races by cutting the distance asked of the runners. More insidiously, everyday races -- ...

This weekend I have seven horses racing from my virtual stable at www.roadtotheroses.com. It is the last chance for a few of my horses to make a convincing move for the Kentucky Derby presented by Yum Brands!  Show me the money (so they qualify).War Pass, Court Vision, Giant Moon, Tale of Ekati, Anak Nakal, El Gato Malo and Z Humor are in my ...

The obvious highlight of the day was the majestic display by Curlin (Smart Strike - Sherriff's Deputy, by Deputy Minister) in the Eminates Airline Dubai World Cup (UAE-I), but the day produced several other interesting pedigrees. Curlin himself is an A++ nick, the Smart Strike/Deputy Minister cross having produced four stakes winners including - ...

Alan analyzes first-crop sires of 2-year-olds represented at the Keeneland April sale in a featured article in The Blood-Horse Data Digest (preview below). If you'd like to follow along in the Keeneland catalog while reading, it's available here. Coming into the Keeneland April 2-year-olds in training sale, TrueNicks turns its eye on the ...

We were sufficiently impressed by Big Brown's devastating Florida Derby (gr. I) win that we went straight to TrueNicks to have a look at the pedigree. The TrueNicks rating is always updated overnight, but when we looked at the pedigree on Saturday afternoon, the page reflected the state of play before Big Brown's win (see attached). Therefore, ...

Last week, I talked about a few of my favorite pedigrees in the Keeneland April sale of 2-year-olds in training. For anyone interested in that sale (or just fascinated by sire lists and anything data-related), The Blood-Horse is offering a free download of the Data Digest for this sale.  In addition to top sires and broodmare sires, top ...