TDN Rising Star

Graded-stakes winning stablemates Locked (Gun Runner) and Crupi (Curlin) have been confirmed to make their 2025 debuts in the Jan. 25 GI Pegasus World Cup Invitational at Gulfstream, according to trainer Todd Pletcher Sunday. Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Walmac Farm's Locked raced four times as a 2-year-old, including a win the GI Breeders' Futurity and a third to champion stablemate Fierceness in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile but was knocked off the Triple Crown trail earlier this year with a knee injury. The TDN Rising Star made his return with...

Nearly two years ago, just prior to the 2023 breeding season, Ashford Stud's Robyn Murray spoke about Munnings on camera. At the time, she said: "Theoretically the best is still yet to come and we're so excited for him... We would expect all of this to elevate him over the next couple years." As the horses conceived that season, the year Munnings stood for $100,000, are currently just weanlings, her words seem prescient given the results of last weekend, when undefeated 2-year-olds by the Ashford Stud sire swept both divisions...

These are the dog days of the racing season at Woodbine. The weather is cold, the meet is winding down and the circuit's best horses have been turned out waiting for the spring. Some have headed to Florida. But there was a reason to be excited about last Saturday's card, even if it were run in a snowstorm. Owned by LNJ Foxwoods, trained by Josie Carrolll and having sold for €1.4 million at the 2022 Arqana Deauville August Yearling Sale, the 3-year-old filly Earhart (Fr) (Siyouni {Fr}) was a dazzling...

Since finishing second in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic, 'TDN Rising Star' Fierceness (City of Light) has undergone what owner Mike Repole described as minor elective surgery on a hind ankle. The news was broken by Dave Grening in the Daily Racing Form on Sunday and reiterated Tuesday by trainer Todd Pletcher at the University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program's Global Symposium on Racing, at which Pletcher was a featured speaker. "We had two vets look at him and one guy said you'll just turn him out for 60...

"Look away Mick Appleby, but there has arguably been no finer exponent of the new and improved all-weather programme in the last decade than the Gosden stable, home to a handful of Classic/Group 1 winners who learned the ropes at the likes of Kempton and Newcastle in the depths of winter." That comment featured in our first installment of Winter Watch, followed by a promise to put that illustrious roll of honour under the spotlight at a later stage when it seemed appropriate. Now, following a week in which John...

Staton Flurry wanted to park that trophy on his shelf. He wanted to win the Oaklawn Park owner's title so badly he could taste it. The hometown product who calls Hot Springs his backyard and sports that wide grin, knew the race was going to be a good old-fashioned Arkansas throwdown. Flurry sweated it, stayed up late strategizing and for months did everything humanly within the rules to secure the prize. Let's put it this way, if he had a jockey's license he might have donned his distinctive black and...

You'd think the nine-furlong GII Remsen S. might be a good measuring stick for GI Kentucky Derby potential because it's the only top-level, 1 1/8-miles American dirt race for juveniles before they turn three. But only three horses in the last 61 years-Thunder Gulch, Go For Gin and Pleasant Colony-have parlayed wins in the Remsen into a blanket of roses at Churchill Downs. Instead, in recent runnings, the Remsen has evolved into a pipeline for progress deeper into the 3-year-old season. Remsen winners have captured two of the last three...

Making just his second start of the season, Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Walmac Farm's 'TDN Rising Star' Locked (Gun Runner) made up for lost time with a powerful performance against older horses in a loaded renewal of Saturday's GII Cigar Mile Handicap at the Big A. It was 1 1/2 lengths back to GI Forego Stakes winner and GI Breeders' Cup Sprint third Mullikin (Violence) in second. The overachieving Maryland-bred Post Time (Frosted), runner-up in the GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile, rallied from the back for third. One of the...

Shadwell Stable's 'TDN Rising Star' Muhimma (Munnings), a jaw-dropping winner of her first two career starts sprinting at Churchill Downs, remained unbeaten in front-running fashion while making her two-turn debut in Saturday's GII Demoiselle Stakes at Aqueduct. The win, good for 10 points on the road to the GI Kentucky Oaks, provided Coolmore stallion Munnings with a sweep of the juvenile graded stakes races at the Big A following Poster (Munnings)'s success in the GII Remsen Stakes contested one race earlier on the program. Muhimma stopped the clock for 1...

With the road to the 2025 GI Kentucky Oaks officially underway, Brad Cox already trains arguably the top two juvenile fillies in the country. After this weekend, he may even have the third. 'TDN Rising Star' Muhimma (Munnings), a press-and-pounce winner of her first two starts by a combined margin of 13 jaw-dropping lengths at Churchill Downs, will make her two-turn and stakes debut for Cox in Saturday's GII Demoiselle Stakes going 1 1/8 miles at Aqueduct. A $700,000 Keeneland September yearling purchase by Shadwell Stable, the rail-drawn gray has...

The Saturday graded stakes action across North America offers several options, but the Big A earns the spotlight as the venerable NYRA track plays host to some strong races. Even though the Cigar Mile Handicap was downgraded a tick from its top level status by the American Graded Stakes Committee in 2023, connections still consider the race to possess a certain cache and the rigor in this year's edition is evident. "It [Cigar Mile] came up pretty salty," said Book'em Danno's trainer Derek Ryan. "It is a Grade II now...

It's been 17 years now that we've been treated to 2-year-olds by Medaglia d'Oro. From his first GII Golden Rod Stakes winner in his first crop--Rachel Alexandra, a filly who went on to beat the boys more than once and was eventually named Horse of the Year--to his latest this past weekend in perfect four-for-four Good Cheer, the Darley mainstay and ageless wonder continues to amaze and delight. "It's so gratifying for him in the autumn of his career to be hitting these heights," said Darley's Darren Fox. "He's been...