Sean McCarthy

While the 3-year-old picture was focused primarily in New York Saturday with the GI Belmont S. and the GI Woody Stephens S., Hopper (Declaration of War) threw his hat into the ring from the other coast with a facile victory in the GIII Affirmed S. at Santa Anita. It was a short field, but the exacta horses both hailed from the Sean McCarthy barn while the trifecta was filled out by three former Bob Baffert pupils. When the stall doors flew, Hopper immediately hightailed it the front from the one...

Michael Petersen's Adare Manor (Uncle Mo) will try to recapture her winning form in Pimlico's Friday feature, the GII George E. Mitchell Black-Eyed Susan S. While under the care of trainer Bob Baffert last season, she debuted with a close up second sprinting six furlongs on Santa Anita's Halloween day card before coming home fourth next time going 6 1/2 panels at Del Mar in November. Shelved for the remainder of the season, the dark bay returned with a gaudy 12-length score in her route bow at Santa Anita and...

According to a report in the Daily Racing Form, trainers Sean McCarthy and Tim Yakteen will take over the training of Bob Baffert's stable once his suspension begins Monday. Baffert was suspended 90 days by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission for the positive test for betamethasone from Medina Spirit (Protonico), who crossed the wire first in the GI Kentucky Derby. Under rules from the California Horse Racing Board, any trainer suspended 60 days or more cannot turn their stable over to a relative or an employee while they are set...

When Lorna Chavez moved from England to the United States in 1995, the land of abundance had a surfeit of skilled participants willing and able to don helmet and boot and join the nation's ranks of exercise riders. "I started in Delaware," said Chavez, a former jockey, of her time as an exercise rider for Hall of Fame trainer Jonathan Sheppard. But that was a quarter-century ago. "Now, there aren't enough riders around," she said. "Especially good ones." And that means busy racetracks of a morning are increasingly populated with...

Adam Smith, the so-called father of economics, once said this about the slickly oiled business machine: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." In other words, the more vested the butcher, the brewer or the baker is in the overall fiscal health of his or her own enterprise, the better the overall product for the rest of us. Smith died in 1790, and so, quite what he would have said...

This Sunday marks a year to the day Battle of Midway (Smart Strike) suffered catastrophic injuries during a morning workout at Santa Anita, unleashing a tempest of opprobrium the likes of which the industry has never before faced in terms of intensity and sustained impact. Of course, Battle of Midway's fatal injury wasn't alone the catalyst--the Jerry Hollendorfer-trained Breeders' Cup winner was one of three fatalities at the track within two days. His death was also the 18th to mar the facility since racing had resumed towards the end of...