Bobby Frankel

Juddmonte's Enduring Transatlantic Legacy

   In Part II of a two-part series, John Berry looks at Juddmonte's lasting influences from the late 80s through to the present on the 40th anniversary weekend of Prince Khalid Abdullah's first Classic win with Known Fact in the 2000 Guineas. Click here for Part I. When the mighty Dancing Brave (Lyphard) retired to stud, his brilliant 1986 G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe triumph shining like a beacon in the collective consciousness, it was generally felt that Prince Khalid Abdullah had probably reached the pinnacle of his ownership...

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Chad Brown Joins TDN Writers' Room As First Video Guest

The TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland has transitioned to video over the past two weeks as the hosts record the show from home, and this week they welcomed their first video guest, none other than four-time defending Eclipse Award-winning trainer and future Hall of Famer Chad Brown. In a wide-ranging interview that touched on how the pandemic has affected his horses and family, what he looks for at sales, his feelings on clenbuterol, his thoughts on how to help smaller trainers get a foothold and his memories of...

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Q & A with Chad Brown

To say trainer Chad Brown enjoyed a productive season in 2019 is an understatement of epic proportions. Fresh off collecting his fourth consecutive Eclipse Award as the nation's leading trainer, the 41-year-old is also responsible for a pair of divisional winners--Horse of the Year and Champion Turf Horse Bricks and Mortar (Giant's Causeway) and Champion Female Turf Horse Uni (GB) (More Than Ready). TDN's Christina Bossinakis sat down with Brown to reflect on the past season and to get a look at what 2020 may hold. TDN: Can you tell...

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An Empire That Will Survive Its Maker's Loss

Mahmoud is interred in the same soil. So, too, are Broomstick and his son Whisk Broom II--both born in the first years of the last century; Tom Fool, Vaguely Noble, Blushing Groom; the great matriarch La Troienne. Stop The Music, the horse who owed his Champagne S. success to the disqualification of Secretariat, lasted to 35 before he had to be euthanized in 2005. And let's not forget The Axe, gray son of gray Mahmoud: the sire of Foggy Note, fourth of nine gray dams behind the farm's modern colossus...

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Empire Maker Dies

Empire Maker (Unbridled--Toussaud, by El Gran Senor), who gave Khalid Abdullah's Juddmonte Farms its lone American Classic winner in the 2003 GI Belmont S. before going on to be a sire of sires and grandsire of two Kentucky Derby winners--including a Triple Crown winner--passed away Saturday, Jan. 18 at Gainesway Farm in Lexington. He was 20 years old and succumbed to a rare disease that compromised his immune system. "The passing of Empire Maker will leave a tremendous void not only in the breeding industry as we know it, but...

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Sadler Talks Stable Stars, Big Race Targets, Hollendorfer and Safety Measures

It was back in 1988 that John Sadler began his stake race winning spree at Del Mar, when the mild-mannered speedball Olympic Prospect took the then-$75,000 Bing Crosby H., prompting jockey Alex Solis afterwards to breathlessly exclaim, "I never rode a horse that fast in my life." When given this little factoid at his Del Mar barn one recent morning--a full 31 years after the event--Sadler assumed the look of someone who'd just been told that water wasn't wet. "I wouldn't think so--it's got to be before that," he said...

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