BloodHorse.com

The results of the Dec. 8 Starlet Stakes (G1) had been official for little more than three hours when editorial@bloodhorse.com received an email from Lynn Taylor from Laharape, Ill. There was clearly something on her mind following Chasing Yesterday’s thrilling head score over Enaya Alrabb at Los Alamitos Race Course in Southern California. “Look ...

Mary Simon, three-time Eclipse Award winner and one of the sport’s most noted historians, brought out an old box of papers she hadn’t looked at in many years and placed it on the living room floor. She had no idea what was in there, just basically old papers she had saved. Among the contents, secured by a small rusted paper clip, were a number of ...

A couple of weeks ago the manager of a TrueNicks enrolled stallion called to tell us that a hypothetical mating had generated Dosage Figures that were all zeroes – zeroes for each category in the Dosage Profile; a Dosage Index of zero; and a Center of Distribution of zero. A check confirmed that this was not an error, and nor was it the result of ...

By J. Keeler Johnson (''Keelerman'') Twitter: @J_Keelerman The Road to the Kentucky Derby continues on Saturday with the $300,000 Los Alamitos Futurity (gr. I), a very productive 1 1/16-mile event at Los Alamitos that has been won over the last ten years by such high-class colts as Pennsylvania Derby (gr. I) winner McKinzie, Metropolitan ...

The text message from Josh Pons arrived Nov. 14 at 5:15 p.m. Hmm…knowing he wasn’t in town for the Keeneland November sale, we wondered what he was up to. The message read: “E: In a 1932 storage box, unopened since packed in NY in 1933 for shipment to his new farm in Md, is a file penciled on cover as ‘Unfinished.’ Inside, Saratoga sales memo to ...

The racing world is shrinking. We have seen horses from Europe come to the United States on a regular basis for years and win our top turf races, and on occasion top dirt races. This year alone we saw the sensational filly Enable become the first horse to win the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and Breeders' Cup Turf in the same year, and we also ...

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 ...