BloodHorse.com

Old habits die hard. BloodHorse, which has stuffed mailboxes weekly since before the Great Depression, will transition to a monthly publication with the April issue. Apparently too many subscribers are too far behind in their reading and would prefer to be served with just one issue a month instead of four. The website and Daily are the drivers of ...

In many respects it seems as if the “year of COVID” has lasted a lot longer than 12 months. A year ago we couldn’t find much on the shelves of the local grocery store, especially paper products. Swiss Skydiver had yet to defeat stakes company. Bob Baffert had just five Kentucky Derby (G1) wins. While we herald the fact racing was able to continue ...

Making a stand against social injustice at a racetrack is nothing new. Perhaps the most famous example occurred more than a century ago when Emily Davison walked out in front of the horses competing in the 1913 Epsom Derby in England. Stepping out from the inside bend at Tattenham Corner at Epsom, the suffragette was struck by King George V’s ...

Major announcements during the final week of February 2021 figure to have monumental implications for Thoroughbred breeding and racing…but we don’t expect the ramifications will be felt for awhile. Last May, The Jockey Club announced a new rule to limit the number of mares a future stallion could cover in a calendar year to 140. We figured it ...

As most sporting endeavors have suffered through delays, disruptions, and cancellations amid the current COVID-19 pandemic, Thoroughbred aficionados proudly pointed out that our sport’s profile has been lifted as racing continued and handle soared. We now have empirical proof. The good folks at Sports & Leisure Research Group shared its “New ...

A mid-February storm brought us more than frosty fields in Central Kentucky. As the breeding season officially opened and foals started arriving in earnest, a thick coating of ice was the culprit for tree limbs bowing to the ground. Despite the cold, the news cycle of the week in the bluegrass rode a hot streak. In Frankfort, the state’s ...

For most of us the opportunity to land a championship of any variety comes through a very small window. For a precious few that play at the highest level, brilliance and consistency put them in a position to excel year after year. We were reminded of this over the weekend that culminated with Super Bowl Sunday, an American holiday of football, ...

The National Thoroughbred Racing Association had big plans for the 50th anniversary of the Eclipse Awards. However, its lengthy list of ideas to celebrate the half-century of the best in Thoroughbred racing and breeding was tossed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Put a large group of people together in an awards ceremony setting? Forget about it. ...