Calder Race Course

Beginning Dec. 26--Opening Day of Gulfstream Park's Championship Meet--fans will be able to meet and watch track announcer Pete Aiello call a race while helping to retrain, rehome and retire Thoroughbreds. For a $50 donation per person, up to six fans can watch Aiello call a race from the announcer's booth with the proceeds going to the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance (TAA). "The TAA is very grateful to the team at Gulfstream Park and Peter Aiello for this unique and fun way to raise funds and awareness for aftercare. We hope...

The annual Dec. 26 start of the Santa Anita season has a natural, anticipatory, turn-the-page vibe to it. But this mark-your-calendar Opening Day mainstay hasn't always been a post-holiday tradition. Although Santa Anita has kicked off its winter/spring meet on the day after Christmas every year since 1977, the track originally opened in 1934 on Christmas Day itself, and did so for the first four years of its existence. "Filmdom entirely forgot its world of make-believe to migrate to the Santa Anita track yesterday for the renewal of horse racing...

What is it, beyond our obvious bond in the Thoroughbred, that most vitally comprises the fabric of the Turf? It's a question answerable in too many ways, requiring definition of too many intangibles, to be easily condensed. But I think we'll get somewhere close if we ponder the retirement this week of Stan Hough, an old-school horseman of a type largely overwhelmed in the era of the super-trainer. And especially because his departure from the stage coincides with the removal of two key features of the scenery: Calder Race Course,...

From a racing standpoint, there could not have been a more appropriate way for Calder to go out. There when the track ran its first ever race in 1971, trainer Eddie Plesa, Jr. won the last race run at the track that had been rebranded as Gulfstream Park West. Plesa won for the 1,326th time at Calder/GPW Saturday when Diligent (Temple City) won the final race that will ever be run at the South Florida racetrack. "I didn't ask anybody to put me in the last race. It just happened....

It takes a certain kind of personality to enter a filly against the boys in a leg of the Triple Crown, and Kenny McPeek showed all of that personality on Wednesday's TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, McPeek talked about his successful, outside-the-box campaign of Peter Callahan's GI Preakness S. winner Swiss Skydiver (Daredevil), why he subbed in Robby Albarado to ride the chestnut, his approach to training 2-year-olds and much more. Swiss Skydiver has run nine...

Saturday's opening day at the meet rebranded as Gulfstream Park West will truly mark the beginning of an end. Barring an 11th hour reprieve from the courts, the 40-day season will be the last ever run at Calder Race Course, the meat-and-potatoes South Florida track that has been operating since 1971. Since 2014, the racing operation has been leased by Calder's owner, Churchill Downs Inc., to Gulfstream Park's owners, The Stronach Group, which renamed the track Gulfstream Park West. That lease expires at the end of the year and TSG...