When Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas agreed to train horses for the recently established Churchill Downs Racing Club, he figured that he and the club members would be in it mostly for the fun. He didn’t quite envision that that fun would involve a Grade II stakes race at Saratoga, but Friday afternoon,…
Just in time for the Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs is offering the chance to become involved in Thoroughbred ownership, ordinarily a pricey endeavor, for the low, low price of $500. Churchill announced last week the creation of theChurchill Downs Racing Club, a partnership in which 200 people would become members—not owners—for a one-time fee of…
From the moment a horse crosses the finish line in the Kentucky Derby (and sometimes even before that), Triple Crown obsession begins. The racing world, in which few interested parties, from track executives to marketers to bettors, can agree, comes as close to consensus as it gets in hoping that a horse will sweep the…
Last Friday afternoon, a group of 25 trainers, including some of New York’s top conditioners, released a statement declaring their support for a phase-out of the raceday medication furosemide by 2016. Among them are trainers, such as Todd Pletcher and Graham Motion, who have in the past advocated for use of the anti-bleeding medication. Furosemide,…
The Travers was shaping up to be the race of the summer when the winners of the three Triple Crown Races—Orb, Oxbow , and Palace Malice—all pointed to it. Without a clear divisional leader, one of those three might have sealed up the three-year-old championship with a win. Oxbow didn’t make it to the race; sidelined by…
At about 5:25 Saturday afternoon, Gary Stevens and Skyring gave Forbes 400’s Brad Kelley and his Calumet Farm their first Grade II victory when they won the Dixie Stakes at Pimlico Race Course; in the same race, Kelley’s 2012 Kentucky Derby runner Optimizer finished third, missing second place by just a head. “Skyring won the Dixie, and…
The last time a Calumet horse won the Kentucky Derby, Bobby Goldsboro had the #1 song in the country, the National Hockey League had just expanded from six teams to twelve, and a gallon of gas cost about 35 cents. The year was 1968, and the horse was Forward Pass, the last of eight Calumet horses to win America’s…
Brooklyn Backstretch 