Risen Star S.

Among the winners at the last Breeders' Cup, what was it that separated White Abarrio (Race Day), Goodnight Olive (Ghostzapper) and Nobals (Noble Mission {GB}) from the rest? Answer: they were the only ones that had changed hands at an American yearling auction, respectively for $7,500, $170,000 and $3,500. Even that lavish investor in the yearling market, Mike Repole, won the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile with a homebred. Except for a couple of European turf juveniles, the rest of the show was a parade of champions raised by "end users":...

The Road to the Kentucky Derby heats up further still on Saturday, as the $400,000 GII Risen Star S. is the first of six prep races that will offer the winner 50 points, virtually locking up a berth in the field for the Run for the Roses at Churchill Downs on May 4. Track Phantom (Quality Road) will look to continue his domination among the local 3-year-olds as he looks to remain unbeaten around two turns in trying to add to his victories in the Dec. 23 Gun Runner S....

He just won the GII Risen Star S., has a strong pair entered in Saturday's GII Rebel S. and accounts for 10 horses being offered in the latest round of the Derby Future Wager. When it comes to 3-year-old talent, Brad Cox's lineup has tremendous quality and tremendous quantity. In the spotlight virtually every Saturday that includes a prep race for the GI Kentucky Derby, Cox found the time to join the team for this week's Thoroughbred Daily News Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland to discuss his Derby prospects....

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...

It's last call for many in Keeneland's GIII Stonestreet Lexington S. as the race to solidify, or sneak into, the GI Kentucky Derby starting gate enters the final furlong. In Due Time (Not This Time) heads this field with an ever-improving resume in both distance and class. A debut winner in the mud at Monmouth last summer, the chestnut was shelved for six months, resurfacing with a third in a Gulfstream optional claimer Jan. 8. A dominant optional claimer winner next out when extended to a mile in Hallandale Feb....

On the opening day of the OBS March 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale, just 7 1/2 weeks ahead of the First Saturday in May, buyers will have a chance to purchase the half-siblings to a pair of GI Kentucky Derby contenders. The first of the two to go through the ring Mar. 15 will be an Always Dreaming half-brother to GII Risen Star S. winner Epicenter (Not This Time). Consigned by Ciaran Dunne's Wavertree Stables as Hip 121, the bay is out of stakes winner and GSP Silent Candy (Candy Ride...

The first thing that will strike most people about the emergence of Epicenter on the Derby trail is the way only his second crop of sophomores is putting up in neon lights the name of Not This Time. The GII Risen Star S. winner is lighting a path for several other sons of the Taylor Made stallion, notably fast-closing GIII Holy Bull runner-up Simplification and Saturday's GII Rebel S. fancy Chasing Time. Two others, Howling Time and In Due Time, are learning their scripts in readiness for forthcoming rehearsals in...

'TDN Rising Star' Smile Happy (Runhappy) and Zandon (Upstart), one a graded winner in their second trip to the races and the other unlucky not to achieve the same, meet for their respective sophomore debuts in Saturday's GII Risen Star S. at the Fair Grounds. The Risen Star is the first of 16 races that comprise the 'Kentucky Derby Championship Series' and offers Kentucky Derby points on a 50-20-10-5 scale. A $185,000 purchase out of the 2020 Fasig-Tipton Selected Yearlings Showcase, Smile Happy was the recipient of an inside-out ride...

Derby dreams at this time of year can prove as ephemeral as the vapours rising into the glacial air of Hot Springs. But the owner of the champion juvenile knows perfectly well that plans, with Thoroughbreds, can only ever be provisional--and that the postponement of Monday's Oaklawn card is a relatively trivial inconvenience to Essential Quality (Tapit). To recall the graver vexations that can unravel a Derby colt, Sheikh Mohammed needs only rewind to the last cycle, and the last colt that offered to requite perhaps the greatest single ambition...

Despite the weather-enforced postponement of the GIII Southwest S., Keepmeinmind (Laoban) will remain in his stall at Oaklawn Park and will pass this weekend's GII Risen Star S. at the Fair Grounds, trainer Robertino Diodoro confirmed Wednesday. "In the end, I feel better running him out of his own stall," Diodoro said. The bay colt, who was third in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile before breaking his maiden in the GII Kentucky Jockey Club S. Nov. 28, turned in his sixth breeze of the year Monday in Hot Springs, going...