Let's cut to the chase. The recent dictum from The Jockey Club (TJC) that North American stallions born in 2020 and forward will be limited to covering 140 mares in a calendar year is an attempt to divert mares from popular stallions to others not as in demand. It's a simplistic approach to a complex [...]

When the balance of power shifts anywhere, one side or another usually makes a move to regain equilibrium. It's the way of the world, the yin and the yang of natural order. In Avengers, a film based on Stan Lee characters from Marvel Comics, a guy named Nick Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D., acts to save [...]

Responding to the global coronavirus pandemic, people and organizations within this industry from around the world have stepped up to generate goodwill gestures every week it seems, whether it's owner-breeder Chuck Fipke offering no-fee breedings to his stallions, Finger Lakes HBPA and track management distributing $827,000 in the form of “stimulus checks” to local trainers [...]

Aside from the threats to life and health, the global coronavirus pandemic has created massive economic and socio-political turmoil and fear over a short time span. In times like this–there haven't been many quite like this in recent years, except for the economic meltdown of 2008 and the crash of 1987 (Black Monday)–it's difficult to [...]

Two weeks ago, the bombshell indictments of trainers Jorge Navarro, Jason Servis, et al., sandwiched between a volatile stock market and the spread of the coronavirus, were the talk of the industry, leading to renewed calls by some for the passage of the Horseracing Integrity Act in Congress. At the time, the doping scandal promised [...]

What an awful way to start the week. Sandwiched between a chaotic stock market and the spread of coronavirus, the racing industry got word Monday of a tawdry racehorse doping scandal that came packaged in four indictments against 27 defendants. These schemes were replete with instances of gutter-level language from wire taps that painted the [...]

There's been a series of conversations in these pages from industry insiders lately about the woes of third- and fourth-year sires, because these stallions don't get the patronage from breeders that first-year (and, in many cases, second-year) horses do, and this has led to all sorts of angst for stallion owners and stud farms. Many [...]

Sole Volante (Karakontie {Jpn}) wasn't an expensive yearling, but he announced his Classic aspirations impressively last weekend in an early Gl Kentucky Derby prep. He won the 1 1/16-mile Glll Sam F. Davis S. at Tampa Bay Downs on Saturday, but sold for only $6,000 at the Keeneland September Yearling sale. He was resold by [...]

Barclay Tagg is a straightforward, no-nonsense type of guy who's been training horses for close to 50 years. During his career, he had a stint as an assistant to legendary hard-boot trainer Frank Whiteley, Jr., and before that, he was a steeplechase jockey. He's in his early eighties and has spent most of his adult [...]

January can be cold, bitter, and snowy in Lexington, but the weather was unseasonably warmer during Keeneland's Horses of All Ages sale, which made life easier for inspecting broodmares and short yearlings on the sales grounds and stallions at the nearby stud farms that power the industry here. Most of the major farms offer daily [...]

On New Year's Day, David Grening broke the news in the Daily Racing Form that Coolmore had purchased a 50% interest in the racing and breeding rights of Gary and Mary West's homebred Maximum Security (New Year's Day). (Disclosure: The Wests and their racing manager, Ben Glass, are retained clients of WTC, Inc.). The colt [...]

“What about the mare?” This is the response that I got recently from a breeder who was grilling me about nicks. She's fairly new to the business and had been doing her homework. She'd run pedigree nick reports with one of her newly acquired mares, and after a while she'd realized that the nick ratings [...]