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The weeping is over. The complaining fruitless. So just accept the direction Thoroughbred Racing is heading. The American Graded Stakes Committee is no doubt comprised of knowledgeable, intelligent people who know what they are doing and follow their formulas and equations with great awareness when juggling graded stakes, especially those rated ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman The Road to the Kentucky Derby continues on Saturday with the $250,000 Remsen Stakes (gr. II) at Aqueduct, a unique race that provides the only opportunity for North America's future Derby contenders to contest a nine-furlong graded stakes race during their two-year-old season. It's ...

Family holiday trips can take some horsepeople to a “no-man’s land” where racing and the Thoroughbred industry are off the grid. Case in point: a Thanksgiving spent in Chester, Vt. As quaint as New England quaint can be, with temperatures the lowest in generations (1 degree Thanksgiving morning) to add to the flavor, Southern Vermont is an ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! On this busy weekend of racing—arguably the last really big weekend of the year—there's graded stakes action from coast to coast and lots of high-class action to analyze. But since we're already happily trekking down to the Road to the 2019 Kentucky ...

In the days leading up to the 1979 Belmont Stakes, with Spectacular Bid having dominated his opposition in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, if someone had asked you to give thanks that we were about to witness a Triple Crown winner, you might have been inclined to laugh in their face.“Big deal,” you might have said. “So we have another ...

In addition to the glamour of the Triple Crown season and the summer joys of Saratoga and Del Mar, there is plenty of horse business to be had in late November, both on the track and in the sale ring. Veteran Turf writer Bob Ehalt takes us back to the glory days of late-autumn racing at Meadowlands. Living in New York and New Jersey in the 1980s ...

Thoroughbred racing’s Golden Age, as we know it, was the decade of the ‘70s when we had three Triple Crown winners, as well as equine heroes such as Ruffian, Forego, Spectacular Bid, Alydar, and the rags to riches Canonero II.But to our parents’ generation, racing’s Golden Age were the years following Word War II when the Sport of Kings got back ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman On this fairly quiet weekend of racing, I imagine that most of us are already looking ahead to the 2019 Kentucky Derby and are busily analyzing race entries and results in search of promising two-year-olds who could make a big impact on the Derby trail this winter. So with this in ...

The late John Gaines was a master of many phases of the Thoroughbred industry: breeding, racing, and selling. Part of his marketing genius in the 1980s was to invest in older mares that had produced several stakes performers and breed them to one of the many stallions he had at his Gainesway Farm, so when the foals hit the yearling sales the ...