Articles and information about the sport of thoroughbred horse racing.
Any
Given Saturday...3 months too late
I have to admit I felt a bit of vindication when Any Given Saturday
drew off to win the Haskell Invitational on August 5.
Read
More.
Helping Their Own
‘Tragic’ is an unfortunate adjective often applied to the
game of horse racing. But the racing community just as often rises to
the occasion when tragedy does strike, as it has with two of racing’s
unsung participants this month...Read
More.
The
Half-Year Awards
With the year half
over and the big summer meets at Del Mar and Saratoga gearing up, I
thought it would be fun to vote for the Half-Year Eclipse Awards. Hey
if ESPN can make up an awards show, why not me?...Read
More
Old-Timers
continue to run
In the
last edition of the Horse Racing Blog, I lamented the premature losses of
Invasor and Scat Daddy. But the last week of stakes racing gave us some fireworks
from the equine geriatric set. Three veteran runners in particular gave racing
fans everywhere something to cheer about...Read
More
Invasor Retires
We
horse racing fans were spoiled during the first half of 2007. We witnessed
a compelling Triple Crown prep season, with plenty of close finishes
between good horses. The Triple Crown itself was even better, especially
the epic stretch duels in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes...Read
More
Summer Horse Racing
One of the first big showdowns
of the summer should come on July 7 at Calder when the top sprinters
Smokey Stover and Fabulous Strike square
off. Those two own four of the five highest Beyer Speed Figures sprinting
this year...Read
More
The
Small Apple?
What
if they threw a Belmont and no one came? As of this writing there
are only five three-year-olds
considered ‘definite’ for the Belmont Stakes, the
oldest and longest of the Triple Crown races. Street
Sense, isn’t one of those five. He’s considered only ‘possible’.
With Hard Spun and Curlin among
the ‘definites’, it sure would be nice if Street Sense
showed up and give racing fans the chance to witness another epic
battle...Read
More
Triple
Tough - Attending all the Triple Crown Races
I attended my second
Preakness on Saturday and, based on what I’ve
seen in my brief history there, I can’t believe I haven’t
made the effort to go more often. My first was in 2005 watching the
Afleet Alex miracle. And now this year’s battle royale between
Curlin and Street Sense...Read
More
How many days until the 2008 Kentucky Derby?
I experienced a
split second of embarrassment and regret right after Street Sense
ran past Hard Spun to win Derby on Saturday. Any Given
Saturday was no where to be found and a very logical result was about
to be posted...Read
More
Final thoughts before the first mint julep
Some
final pre-Derby notes from the Trainers Dinner, one last early morning
on the backstretch and the post position draw (as seen on TV), all
while packing for Derbyville...Read
More
The Racing Blog picks the 2007 Kentucky
Derby winner
I had my moment of clarity on Derby Monday
morning. It came after a weekend of rushing around Keeneland and Churchill
Downs trying to
see as many Derby horses in the flesh as possible. It came after a
weekend of endlessly viewing replays of workouts and pouring over
the information stored in my Derby-crazed brain. But thankfully, it
came and I can now start thinking about how to bet the race as opposed
to who to bet...Read
More
Kentucky Derby Workouts
I had hoped to have a little more clarity
on this year’s Derby
by now. But because I’m a chronically bad morning person and
so many Derby horses seem to be doing exceptionally well, I’m
probably more confused than ever with only six days to go...Read
More
Kentucky Derby pedigrees, who has the right stuff to
win the Derby?
There are many things that make the Kentucky Derby a unique race and
therefore extremely difficult to handicap. One of the main things
that separate the Derby from other American Grade 1 races is the mile
and a quarter distance...Read
More
The
blog ranks the 2007 Derby Contenders
The
Kentucky Derby Festival officially kicks off in Louisville with an
air show and massive fireworks display over the Ohio River tonight.
The Lexington Stakes, the last graded Derby prep will be run at Keeneland
this afternoon. The winner of that race will earn a pass into the
Derby starting gate, but probably not into true Derby contention. ....Read
More
Rules For Picking The Kentucky Derby
When
I first started betting the Kentucky Derby in the 1984 the ‘rules’ for
selecting a Derby winner were something like this...Read
More
A Reported Outbreak of Derby Fever
It
hit me today. This morning I woke up with an unmistakable case of
Derby Fever. I’ve
gotten the sickness every spring for awhile now. I never know exactly
when I’ll come down with it, I’m just glad I did. I always
get a little afraid that I’ll somehow ‘outgrow’ Derby,
the way I outgrew baseball cards and other similar childhood passions.
But thankfully, I’m flush with Derby Fever and I can be a little
kid again for the next few weeks...Read
More
Keeneland
- racing as it was meant to be…
It’s officially
been spring for a few weeks now, but spring really begins in Central
Kentucky today with the opening of Keeneland. After two weeks of summer
weather, a drastic cold snap has put a bit of a damper on things, but
its still Keeneland (and it’s still four weeks ‘til Oaks
Day). That’s enough to get any racing fans heart rate up, even
if the thermometer isn’t following suit...Read
More
Old
Friends trying to "Fly Wallenda Home"
Old Friends,
horse retirement farm in Georgetown, Kentucky, has taken up the cause of returning
Wallenda from Japan. Such an endeavor has become a bit of specialty for Old
Friends operator Michael Blowen... Read
More
Old
School vs. New School - Can Curlin win the Kentucky Derby?
A coworker of mine, I’ll
call him Leif, has been convinced that Curlin is the Kentucky Derby winner
ever since the colt broke his maiden first time out by 12 ¾ lengths
back in early February... Read
More
Churchill Downs before the Derby
It’s
only March, but you could smell just a hint of Derby in the air and could
feel the grounds beginning to come back to life. Horses are once again stabled
at Churchill, after the annual two month winter hiatus for backstretch maintenance... Read
More
One Step Back, Two Steps Forward
Pimlico officially announced its 2007 spring/summer
stakes schedule on February 20. Now the Pimlico Special is officially
dead for 2007,
and the races’ absence is yet another sign of the tenuous
financial situation at the Maryland Jockey Club...Read
More
Horseracing
on television
The
landscape of televised horse racing has undergone some major changes
over the past year. The Breeders’ Cup broadcast
moved from NBC to ESPN and the latter network decided to drop its
weekly racing recap
show. Now comes word that Churchill Downs and its affiliated tracks,
namely the Fair Grounds, Calder and Arlington will be phased out
of the TVG lineup...Read
More
Beware the Derby Fever
The surest
sign of the annual Derby Fever epidemic is the sale of promising, yet unproven,
three year-olds...Read
More
The 2007 racing season begins.
With all the stakes and all the nice horses
scheduled to compete, the first Saturday in February will also help
move the 2007 racing
season out of the shadow of 2006. Some of the stars of yesterday are
still around, but there are plenty of other runners, that could well
be the talking horses as the year progresses...Read
More
Barbaro: Recognizing greatness.
For the last twenty years or so,
I’ve
spent the winter and early spring months searching for the winner
of the Kentucky Derby. In 2006,
Barbaro found me. More than once actually...Read
More
Fun With Horse Racing Quotes
What the Horse Racing
Blog has to say about some recent notable quotes from the racetrack...Read
More
Eclipsing
The Jacksons
The 2006 Eclipse Awards were announced last
night in Beverly Hills and there were a few surprises in the equine
categories and a big
disappointment on the human side...Read
More
Polytrack
Racing Surfaces
We’re still in the early stages of the
synthetic racetrack revolution in North America. But the anecdotal evidence
from trainers
has been overwhelmingly
positive and vet bills are said to be much lower for horses training over
these new surfaces. The cold hard numbers are equally encouraging so far...Read
More
It's Derby Time Again
This
will be the first in a series of looks at the contenders for Derby immortality.
I’ve decided to mention only the three year-old that
I think can win going a mile and a quarter on May 5. In the past I’ve
been right a few times. Alysheba, Unbridled, Sea Hero, Real
Quiet and
Barbaro are in my stable of Derby winners (and Grindstone saved
me in 1996 when I took Editor’s Note, but I don’t really
count that). Go For Gin, Silver Charm, Monarchos
and Giacomo are
winners that I was on at one point or another prior to their wins...Read
More
A Bigger, Better Breeders' Cup
While the Breeders’ Cup will never match the Kentucky Derby
in terms of sheer energy and atmosphere, it’s great that they have
essentially added an ‘Oaks Day’ to the proceedings. It’s
a wonderful thing to walk out of Churchill on the first Friday in
May (or last in
April sometimes), having had a fantastic time, and knowing that that
was just the appetizer...Read
More
Every Vote Counts (Even Pretend Ones)
It will be very interesting to see what the voters will do
in the three year-old colt division where you basically have two Hall
of
Fame runners
to choose from (and in hindsight maybe a third if Discreet Cat has
a big 2007). I’m about as big a Barbaro fan
as there is and I don’t
think he would have let Bernardini beat
him if he had finished the Preakness. But an objective comparison of their
2006 campaigns gives Bernardini a
(very) slight edge...Read
More
Life is Just A Fantasy
“Someone should get fantasy horse racing going,” I thought. “It’s
a perfect way to grow fan interest and it even uses the same skill sets
that attract handicappers-gathering information, analyzing it and then
making decisions. Maybe the NTRA would run with the idea and do something
constructive to promote and market the game.”...Read
More
Dead Trainers Make the Best Spokesmen
Now Woody is the star of a Mill Ridge Farm ad campaign
for their stallion, and former Stephens trainee, Gone West. Open up a
Thanksgiving weekend
edition Daily Racing Form, or recent issues of The Blood-Horse and there’s
ole Woody, pictured under the headline: “Woody always said he’d
be a great stallion”...Read
More
The Grinch Who Stole The 2007 Racing Season
The fact that top equine stars
tend not to stay around very long, while extremely frustrating, is only
one factor in racing’s decline in
popularity over the past 30 years. And in the grand scheme of things, it’s
probably a rather small one. The shift of American culture to one of immediate
gratification is probably the biggest reason there is a growing disinterest
in a game that takes time and patience to learn and play...Read
More
Matt O'Neil
has been a racing enthusiast since the mid-1980's. He is a freelance
writer and thoroughbred marketing consultant and editor of the breeding
journal Owner-Breeder International. Contact
Matt O'Neil
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