We end this crazy Triple Crown season with Brian’s final race preview of the year. Despite an unpredictable schedule and way more races to handicap, Brian continued his masterful, detailed analysis, as he has for a decade. My deep and heartfelt thanks for all of his work, and I hope that he helped you cash…
At the risk of stating the obvious, this year’s Triple Crown became something different from what we were used to the minute that Churchill Downs announced that it would host the Kentucky Derby on September 5. We’d suspected before that, of course. A month before the traditional Derby date, virtually the entire country was limiting…
He has taken us through every Derby prep since February, and at the end of the Triple Crown season, Brian Nadeau is back with his final race preview, as Justify tries to become the 13th Triple Crown winner. Can he do it? Brian takes a look. Belmont Park: The GI, $1.5 million Belmont Stakes at…
Pimlico: The Grade I, $1.5 million Preakness at 1 3/16 miles by Brian Nadeau #1 Quip (12-1): GII Tampa Bay Derby winner gutted it out for a well-beaten second behind the then-undefeated Magnum Moon in the GI Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park, then opted to skip the Kentucky Derby to run here as a fresh…
The last time three different horses won the U.S. Triple Crown races, none of them won the award for champion 3-year-old male. That honor went to Will Take Charge, a horse that finished eighth in the Kentucky Derby, seventh in the Preakness, and 10th in the Belmont Stakes. But he got good — really good…
The next time a horse is awarded the Triple Crown trophy will be the first time for a new design, as New York Racing Association president Chris Kay has commissioned a redesigned piece to replace the one awarded to the previous Triple Crown winners. Designed and created by Cartier, the trophy awarded to American Pharoah’s connections last year is a…
The weather forecast for Saturday’s Preakness Stakes may be dismal, but the outlook for Nyquist to become the fourth horse in five years to nab the first two legs of the Triple Crown is much more auspicious. Impressive on the track Thursday morning in a brisk gallop, the Kentucky Derby winner has given every indication…
Within minutes of his Triple Crown victory Saturday afternoon at Belmont Park, horse racing fans began to ask the inevitable question: will American Pharoah race again? It is one of the paradoxes of thoroughbred racing that the very achievements that the sport most trumpets and that fans most want to see – victories in Triple…
As American Pharoah has made his way to one of horse racing’s biggest stages – Belmont Park with a Triple Crown on the line – the human stars of his show have been his owner, trainer, and jockey. And while they have rightly commanded the media spotlight, the three-year-old colt also has a supporting cast,…
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…
Brooklyn Backstretch 