Alydar

When he came to Europe, and rode them all to sleep, everyone said that Steve Cauthen had a clock in his head. If a Swiss watchmaker wanted to check his work, he could just ask Cauthen to go five-eighths in a minute flat. But all that precision seemingly ran askew when it came to counting his years, each of which might have compressed a decade. As Laz Barrera said, when the press asked him about keeping "The Kid" on his Derby horse: "Stevie Cauthen doesn't come from this planet. He's...

J.T. Lundy, the controversial former president of Calumet Farm, passed away Tuesday. He was 82. The news was reported on Facebook by his sister, Kathy Lundy Jones, and his son, Robert. According to Robert's post, Lundy fell in November, suffered from a head injury and never fully recovered. According to the BloodHorse, Lundy was a native of Georgetown, Ky. and grew up on a farm working primarily around show cattle. He told the magazine in 1990 that he eventually steered into the horse business because it appeared to be more lucrative...

Keeneland Library's Lecture Series returns in winter/spring 2024 with four ticketed events that celebrate recently published works about Thoroughbred racing whose authors conducted research at Keeneland Library, the repository said in a release Wednesday. During programs planned from January through May, the following authors will discuss their books, with each presentation followed by a reception and book signing: 24 - Kim Wickens, Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America's Legendary Racehorse. 21 - Fred M. Kray, Broken: The Suspicious Death of Alydar and the End of Horse Racing's...

If there was a Thoroughbred who ever needed legal counsel to mount an adequate defense of his life, then perhaps it would be Calumet Farm's MGISW Alydar. His battles with rival Affirmed as both a juvenile, and of course, through the 1978 Triple Crown are now the stuff of legend. However, what has clouded all those spectacular past performances came during his stallion career when he tragically died from an injury which was sustained while he was in his Calumet stall on a November night in 1990. Officially chalked up...

The world we share with these amazing animals may be an ever-changing one, but its mysteries abide. We consider ourselves ever more knowledgeable, ever more certain, riding the slipstream of science. Yet how much do we truly know, when Afternoon Deelites holds out for all those years and then waits just six days before following his owner to whatever shore may (or may not) lie beyond the horizon of life? The same journey was made this week by the trainer of Alydar. John Veitch laid the ground for the greatest...

John Veitch, a Hall of Famer who trained numerous stars, including Alydar, whose legendary battles with Affirmed were part of one of the sport's greatest rivalries, passed away Tuesday in Lexington, Kentucky. He was 77. The news of Veitch's passing was first reported by the Blood-Horse. Veitch's training career ran from 1974 through 2003. According to Equibase, he had 410 career winners and his stable amassed earnings of $20,097,980. He won 76 graded stakes and 93 stakes races overall. Veitch's best years came as the head trainer for Calumet Farm....

Two summers ago, when six-time Eclipse Award-winning photographer Barbara D. Livingston acquired the entire five-decade archive of noted 20th Century racetrack photographer Jim Raftery, she thought the hard part would be getting the 300 oversized boxes from Florida to New York in the middle of a pandemic. Turns out Livingston was wrong. After two years of sifting through the massive collection, she said the truly "impossible task" ended up being having to select some 60 images out of more than two million for a just-opened exhibit titled "Jim Raftery: A...

Favorite: Easy Goer (Alydar). Every once in a while a horse comes around that makes you believe that nothing is impossible. They don't just win, they win effortlessly. They don't just run fast, they break track records. They have the perfect pedigree. They're in the right hands. What can they accomplish? What can't they accomplish? That was the way I felt about Easy Goer. After losing his debut by a nose, Easy Goer reeled off four straight wins, including the 1988 GI Champagne S. He would win by four, five...

All week in this ongoing series, we have been talking to stallion managers and others about the difficulties in filling books for stallions other than first-year and premier stallions. In terms of the difficulties of filling books for third- and fourth-year stallions, I would say that we have been lucky this hasn't really been a problem at Claiborne. However, I have seen it be tricky for some of our less-expensive stallions. The different incentive programs that other farms offer have probably hurt us because breeders can breed elsewhere for deep...