Cody's Wish

The apartment glistens with the quiet discernment of its owner. Lexington spreads below the great windows and balcony, its urban grid seamed green by the many old trees that endure downtown. In somewhat the same way, amid all the artwork, the gleaming décor, Scott Heider draws on Nature to explain his love of this business. He gestures towards a rose in a vase. "That's the best analogy, you know," he says. "Beautiful, but it doesn't last forever. I look at the wonderful broodmares we've been blessed with--these living, breathing creatures--and...

Celebrating 40 Years of the Breeders' Cup with Living Legends There are great racehorses and there are great sires. One doesn't always equal the other. Sometimes, but not always, a horse is equally adept at both. "It's rare for world-class racehorse to become a world-class sire. It's two different resumes, two different achievements," said John Sikura, owner of Hill 'n' Dale. Rarely, ever so rarely, a top racehorse becomes a sire so good and so prolific in generating top-class horses that his own championship race record becomes almost an afterthought....

The legend of Cody's Wish (Curlin), dampened only briefly by a 10-length defeat in the two-turn GI Whitney S., is back at full flame with a gutsy effort in the rescheduled 'Win and You're In' GII Vosburgh S. Rained off of Saturday's card at Belmont's Aqueduct Fall meeting, the Vosburgh awarded a paid entry to the GI Qatar Racing Breeders' Cup Sprint though winning trainer Bill Mott indicated a title defense for his stable's star in the GI Big Ass Fans Breeders's Cup Dirt mile was preferred. Beaten just once...

Just over 100 years ago, the Jockey Club's resident New York handicapper, William Vosburgh, knew the value of history and understood how it could be applied when he penned his magnum opus, Racing In America, 1866-1921. The turf wordsmith revealed his intent in the Preface when he said, "I shall show that, owing to want of popular support, racing had fallen so low, and so infrequent, as to excite little or no interest." What he was talking about was a sport in crisis, as progressive forces in America drove racing...

6th-BAQ, $90K, Msw, 2yo, 1m, 3:36 p.m. One of only a pair of first-time starters in the field, DIGITAL OPS (Nyquist) is the second foal out of MSW/GISP Flora Dora (First Dude). Picked up on a final bid of $600,000 at this Spring's OBS March sale, the colt is a half-brother to 'TDN Rising Star' Spun Intended (Hard Spun). Drawn outside is fellow first timer and stablemate Unique Insight (Gun Runner). This one, a $360,000 Fasig-Tipton October pickup by Klaravich Stables, is a half to runaway Albany S. winner Drake's...

When Carson's Run (Cupid) won the GI bet365 Summer S. at Woodbine Racetrack this past weekend, earning a trip to the Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita, the story was bigger than one horse and one race. The 2-year-old chestnut colt is named for the 31-year-old son of Wade Jost, who bought into the horse from his classmate at the United States Military Academy, Terry Finley, thorough West Point Thoroughbreds. Carson Jost continues to battle Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome. The story might sound familiar, as Cody's Wish (Curlin) is named in honor of...

TDN contributor Mike Kane, the human connections surrounding Cody's Wish, the Gregson Foundation and noted television personality Kenny Rice will be honored with various awards during the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters 63rd Annual Awards Dinner, Wednesday, Nov. 1, at The Woolf Den by The Derby in Arcadia, CA. Kane, who has been this publication's on-site correspondent at Saratoga for several years, has been an NTWAB member since 1996 and is in his fifth decade of covering racing in print, radio, television and online. Kane will be honored with the...

Veteran jockey Junior Alvarado has been named the winner of the 2023 Mike Venezia Memorial Award. Alvarado, based this summer at Saratoga Race Course and the regular rider of GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile winner Cody's Wish, was chosen by a committee comprised of members of the Venezia family, representatives of the Jockeys' Guild and retired Eclipse Award-winning jockey Richard Migliore. Alvarado will be recognized in a winner's circle ceremony at Saratoga Saturday. "The Venezia Memorial Award is about representing the sport we love so much in the best way...

As Tuesday's entry time looms, the GI Travers S. is shaping up as a rare showdown of the three winners of this season's Triple Crown races. That's happened only five times since 1978, and on no occasion during the last 45 years when the winners of those spring Classics all graced the starting gate for Saratoga's "Midsummer Derby" has any one of them emerged victorious. That's a fairly daunting stat considering how the match-up of the GI Kentucky Derby, GI Preakness S. and GI Belmont S. winners is essentially what...

LNJ Foxwoods' Scotland (Good Magic), last-out winner of the July 21 Curlin S., tuned up for Saturday's GI Travers S. with a four-furlong move in :47.60 (1/68) over the Oklahoma training track Sunday in Saratoga. "It was a good, useful work," said trainer Bill Mott. "He galloped out well and seemed to have good energy and to be moving well. It was fast enough. I think we're fit enough." A debut winner at Gulfstream in March, Scotland was nosed out of an allowance victory at Keeneland in April before taking...

7th-DMR, $82K, Msw, 2yo, f, 6 1/2f, 8:15 p.m. A filly whose pedigree needs no introduction, TAMARA (Bolt d'Oro) is the latest foal out of MGISW Beholder to make the races for Spendthrift Farm and trainer Richard Mandella. Beholder, now a graded-stakes producer with Teena Ella (War Front), saw her youngest foal by Curlin bring a sale-topping $4,000,000 at last week's Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select Yearling Sale. Out of blue hen Leslie's Lady, she is of course a half-sister to GISW Mendelssohn and leading general sire Into Mischief. Drawn on the...

Godolphin's Cody's Wish (Curlin), third in the nine-furlong GI Whitney Aug. 5 at Saratoga, is expected to return to one-turn racing this fall at the Belmont at the Big A meet, according to Michael Banahan, Director of Bloodstock for Godolphin. A potential landing spot for the 5-year-old could be the seven-furlong GII Vosburgh S. for 3-year-olds Sept. 30, a "Win and You're In" for the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint in November at Santa Anita. Banahan indicated that the Vosburgh could also be used as a steppingstone to the GI Dirt...