Change of Control

The Tampa Road to the Kentucky Derby heats up Saturday afternoon, as a full field of 12 sophomore males is set to face the starter for the $250,000 GIII Sam F. Davis S., with 42 Kentucky Derby qualifying points (20-10-6-4-2) up for grabs. When Litigate (Blame) took out the 2023 renewal, he was giving trainer Todd Pletcher a seventh victory in the Davis, having won the race for the first time in 2006 with Bluegrass Cat (Storm Cat). 'TDN Rising Star' Agate Road (Quality Road) will be the more-fancied of...

In 1993, Michelle Lovell rode five races at Saratoga. Then known as jockey Michelle Hanley, she came home with three second-place finishes, but never got that win at the Spa. Twenty-nine years later, she finally made it to the winner's circle. This time it was with the brilliant GII Saratoga Special S. winner Damon's Mound (Girvin), her first Saratoga starter as a trainer. How do the two experiences compare? "Riding here back in the day, I was just super in awe of the place," Lovell explained. "Obviously who wouldn't want...

Call it a Milestone achievement. Any farm, right up to the biggest brands of the Bluegrass, would have been proud to match the three stakes wins in 24 hours recorded by John O'Meara a couple of weekends back. And yet this is a man tending just a dozen mares, with the assistance of a single employee. Some landmark, then, in an odyssey stretching back four decades to when O'Meara first arrived in Lexington and called a farm he'd found in the bus station telephone directory. "Is anybody Irish working there?"...