The 2022 Preakness Stakes comes to you with a paradox, a wagering quandary that pits one 21st century trend against one 2020s trend. The trend this century is the friend to chalk. Since 2000, 10 favorites found the Pimlico Race Course winner’s circle. Oxbow at 15.40/1 in 2013 is the […]
Envoutante has always been a filly who was good, but often not quite good enough to break through at the highest levels. Trainer Kenny McPeek attempts to change that by sending the now 5-year-old mare to Santa Anita Park’s Grade 1 Beholder Mile. “Envoutante is going to work next Friday […]
The likely end of Swiss Skydiver’s stellar career is in sight, with the announcement that the 2020 Champion 3-Year-Old Filly will get time off before being sold this November. Swiss Skydiver will likely run in the Nov. 6 Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Del Mar, then head almost immediately to the […]
Say this for the 2021 Personal Ensign; Letruska may be the clubhouse leader as Champion Older Filly of the Year, but her rivals for that title don’t scare easily. That explains why the Grade 1 Personal Ensign – one of Saratoga’s six Grade 1s on Saturday — features a deep, […]
The names of those racing on Saturday’s Travers Day at Saratoga sound like a Thoroughbred all-star team: Essential Quality, Gamine, Letruska, Tribhuvan, Jackie’s Warrior, Life Is Good, Whitmore, Swiss Skydiver. All of them – and others you may have heard of – are set to run in one of Saratoga’s […]
The cliché “quality over quantity” washes over this year’s Grade 1 Whitney Stakes at Saratoga like the wake from Knicks Go’s last race. It floods the zone like Maxfield’s last two outings and Silver State’s last trip around Belmont Park. If you’re going to send only five horses around Saratoga’s […]
Even with the quarantine for Equine Herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1) lifted on Monday, trainer Kenny McPeek filed a hearing request with the New York State Gaming Commission after several of his horses were denied entry into early-week races at Saratoga. BloodHorse reported that attorney Andrew Mollica filed the request on McPeek’s behalf […]
One of the ways Kenny McPeek made his bones as a trainer was to never doubt himself or his charges. This explains one reason why he plans on running star filly Swiss Skydiver in the Grade 1 Whitney Stakes at Saratoga. “Someone brought up the word ‘can’t’ to me the […]
Somehow, the Swiss Skydiver Stakes Tour bypassed Belmont Park. Somehow, the Champion 3-Year-Old Filly missed the biggest racing sandbox of them all – Big Sandy. How did a filly who won six graded stakes races over five racetracks miss America’s largest racetrack, Belmont Park? An oversight? Well, it’s an oversight […]
Plans for horse racing’s newest female star – you know her as Letruska – remain fluid entering the week, less than 48 hours after the 5-year-old mare’s stirring Apple Blossom Handicap victory. ‘I think we’re going to take a little bit more time with her,” trainer Fausto Gutierrez told Oaklawn […]
You could make a credible case the Grade 1 Apple Blossom Handicap at Oaklawn Park is the clubhouse leader for the best race of 2021. The reason you can make that case leads you to make cases for the two principals in Saturday’s Oaklawn headliner. Even-money favorite Monomoy Girl vs. […]
Bring the jury in on Swiss Skydiver. Throw out whatever doubts you may have held on the Champion 3-Year-Old Filly impressing as a 4-year-old. Swiss Skydiver didn’t exactly pick up in 2021 where she left off in 2020 after stumbling out of the gate at the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Her […]
Authentic rarely won his big races by big margins. But, he won his final “race” – the Eclipse Award for 2020 Horse of the Year – by a Secretariat at the Belmont-esque 31 lengths on the track. The Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup Classic champion garnered 224 out of a […]
Horse of the Year candidates Authentic, Improbable, and Monomoy Girl headline the finalists for the 2020 Eclipse Awards, announced Saturday by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters (NTWAB), and the Daily Racing Form. The Eclipse Awards get their name from the iconic 18th-century racehorse and […]
Swiss Skydiver, Charlatan and Knicks Go are three names you’d expect to find in the world’s richest race – the $20 million Saudi Cup. And those three American stars headline a lengthy nominee list for the Feb. 20 Saudi Cup. The 1 1/8-mile Saudi Cup drew 109 nominees from nine […]
As one 2020 standout returned to training, another one returned to the shelf – albeit temporarily. Swiss Skydiver hit the track, running for the first time since November’s Breeders’ Cup Distaff, while a report said Maxfield suffered a virus that will keep him out of the Pegasus World Cup Invitational. […]
Yes, it’s time for the Eclipse Awards, which in 2020, were brought to you by a scrambled Triple Crown schedule, along with tracks closing, reopening – and closing. Also featured were few – if any – fans in the stands and a rash of retirements. But the horses running in […]
Now that we’ve bid farewell to the Thoroughbred standouts who retired in 2020, which horses will we greet as the returning equine stars worthy of attention in 2021? We bid farewell to Authentic, Improbable, Maximum Security, Vekoma, Tom’s d’Etat, War of Will, McKinzie, Serengeti Empress, Enable, and Ghaiyyath in recent […]
This may not be Secretariat vs. Sham, Affirmed vs. Alydar, or Sunday Silence vs. Easy Goer. But, Monomoy Girl vs. Swiss Skydiver in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff promises to be one of the best one-on-one racing duels of the year. If nothing else, it promises to give bettors a relative […]
Preakness Stakes champion Swiss Skydiver will bypass the Breeders’ Cup Classic and run with her gender in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. And with that, she and 2018 Distaff champion Monomoy Girl will separate themselves from the rest of the field, according to their speed figures. The $2 million Breeders’ Cup […]
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