Epicenter

A share in leading sire Not This Time figures to provide some fireworks when it kicks off the action Tuesday night at Saratoga. The sale of the share is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Not This Time is the sire of five Grade I winners from three crops to race, and is the leading fourth-crop sire of 2023. The share includes all projected income from the 2023 breeding season. Shareholders receive one nomination annually, plus their proportional share of the excess book. (See complete details here.) Not This Time is governed...

With recently crowned champion 3-year-old Epicenter (Not This Time) off to begin his career at stud at Ashford, the team behind the popular GI Runhappy Travers S. winner have some highly regarded reinforcements on the way. Disarm (c, 3, Gun Runner--Easy Tap, by Tapit), off since earning his 'TDN Rising Star' badge in runaway fashion at second asking on the Whitney undercard at Saratoga last summer, could return versus allowance company at Oaklawn later this month. The Winchell Thoroughbreds homebred, previously highlighted in our 'Second Chances' series following a smart...

Coolmore America's Ashford has donated the blankets worn by three of the champions in their stallion barn--2015 and 2018 Triple Crown winners American Pharoah and Justify, as well as 2022 champion 3-year-old colt Epicenter--to CASA of Lexington's annual "Bourbon and the Bayou" silent auction. The blankets will be auctioned individually to support advocacy for abused and neglected children in the family court systems of seven Central Kentucky counties. "There haven't been many opportunities ever before to acquire the actual blankets worn by celebrity Thoroughbreds," said Melynda Jamison, CASA of Lexington's...

Having just last week been crowned the Longines World's Best Racehorse in London, 'TDN Rising Star' Flightline (Tapit) was named America's no-doubt-about-it Horse of the Year and champion dirt male at the Eclipse Awards, held Thursday evening at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida. Bred in Kentucky by Jane Lyon's Summer Wind Equine, Flightline was a $1-million purchase out of the 2019 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale, didn't start as a juvenile and didn't get to a starting gate until April of his 3-year-old season. The negatives end right about there. In...

A pair of battle-tested performers in their 3-year-old categories, Nest and Epicenter showed grit and determination versus some stiff competition along the Derby and Oaks Trails. NEST When all the votes were tallied, the title for the 2022 champion 3-year-old filly division went for the second consecutive year to another uber-talented daughter of Curlin out of an A.P. Indy mare. Also trained by Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher, Nest follows in the footsteps of 2021 3-year-old filly champion Malathaat, who employed a similar route to Eclipse success, including wins in...

Grade I winner Epicenter (Not This Time), who suffered a displaced condylar fracture to his right front leg during the running of the Nov. 5 GI Breeders' Cup Classic at Keeneland, on Friday was sent to Coolmore's Ashford Stud near Versailles, KY, where he will stand his first season at stud this year, Winchell Thorougbreds racing manager David Fiske tweeted. The winner of last year's GI Runhappy Travers. S. and GII Jim Dandy S. had been recuperating from the injury and subsequent surgery, conducted by Dr. Larry Bramlage at Rood...

Sergio Leone's 1966 masterpiece, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," was the last and best of a trilogy of Leone spaghetti westerns that upended the traditional genre. Before Leone and other Italian directors like Sergio Corbucci set about redefining the Old West in Europe, traditional domestic westerns featured clean-cut leads like John Wayne, Alan Ladd, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart in films by directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks that clearly delineated the good from the bad and ugly. Not so Leone, who made the genre...

Who was the most talented 3-year-old male to race this year? I will not argue with anyone who says the answer is Epicenter (Not This Time). He won the GII Louisiana Derby, finished second in the GI Kentucky Derby and second in the GI Preakness S. From there, he won the GII Jim Dandy S. and the GI Runhappy Travers S. before an injury kept him from finishing the GI Breeders' Cup Classic. Other than the Classic, he finished first or second in all of his starts and won four...

Winchell Thoroughbreds' Epicenter (Not This Time--Silent Candy, by Candy Ride {Arg}), a leading candidate for champion 3-year-old honors, will enter stud in 2023 at Ashford Stud. He will stand for $45,000. Bred at Mike, Brent and Kevin Harrises' Westwind Farms in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Epicenter was hammered down to the Winchell team for $260,000 at the 2020 Keeneland September sale and was ultimately turned over to the operation's Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen. A maiden winner at second asking going the one-turn mile at Churchill Downs, the bay romped...

Saturday's GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic won by Flightline (Tapit) has officially had its six-furlong split adjusted to a corrected time of 1:09.27 after the sensor was tripped early by an outrider heading to assist Epicenter (Not This Time), who was pulled up on the Keeneland backstretch with a condylar fracture to his right front. The official statement, jointly released by Equibase and Keeneland, reads as follows: During the running of the GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic on Nov. 5, 2022, at Keeneland, the timing eye for the three-quarter fraction...

Trainer Steve Asmussen reported Sunday that leading 3-year-old Epicenter (Not This Time), who was pulled up on the backstretch of Saturday's GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic, had two screws inserted to stabilize a fracture in his condylar joint and is expected to make a full recovery for his future stallion career. "Epicenter had a lateral condylar fracture of his right front," Asmussen said in a statement. "This morning, Dr. Larry Bramlage inserted two screws to stabilize the injury and the horse is up and resting in his stall. After surgery,...

LEXINGTON, KY - You can add horse of a lifetime to the superlatives now, too. Unbeaten 'TDN Rising Star' Flightline (Tapit) ran to his already unworldly reputation, and, dare we say, even more, with a spectacular 8 1/4-length victory in Saturday's $6-million GI Breeders' Cup Classic at Keeneland. Olympiad (Speightstown) and fellow 'Rising Star' Taiba (Gun Runner) filled out the minors. "A great win today. He just ran beautiful; just like we thought he could," said winning trainer John Sadler, who previously put to bed an 0-for-44 mark at the...