The Week in Review

Though he won the 2022 GI Florida Derby with White Abarrio (Race Day), Saffie Joseph, Jr. isn't necessarily thought of as someone to fear on the roads to the GI Kentucky Oaks and GI Kentucky Derby. His bread and butter remains claimers and tough older horses like the now 5-year-old White Abbario and Skippylongstocking (Exaggerator), who won this year's GII Oaklawn Handicap and the GII Charles Town Classic Stakes. But that may be about to change. It's early yet and Todd Pletcher has yet to send his first string to...

In the aftermath of the Breeders' Cup, the potential in the older horse division has shifted so that the next big-breakout, classic-distance stars might very well rise in the West. While it's true that divisional kingpins like 'TDN Rising Stars' Sierra Leone (Gun Runner), Fierceness (City of Light), and Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna), plus GI Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan (Goldencents), will be plotting 2025 campaigns from training bases farther east, those headline horses will go into their 4-year-old seasons with lofty expectations based on already-established, champion-level accomplishments. But a...

With major Breeders' Cup prep races all in the books, this past weekend's stakes action focused on state-bred and -sired programs in West Virginia, Maryland and Louisiana. It wasn't difficult to find three standout horses who turned in headline-worthy efforts for smaller-scale outfits whose perseverance and accomplishments routinely fly beneath the radar. Leading the charge at Charles Town was breeder/owner/trainer Cyndy McKee's Beau Ridge Farm, which won four of Saturday's night's 10 Breeders' Classic stakes for West Virginia-breds, and ran second and third with two other entrants. "It felt like...

Let's start this column with the disclaimer that it's way too early to start seriously talking about how a one-turn-mile victory at age two might translate to winning a 10-furlong stakes some 7 ½ months from now in a chaotic field of 20. We'll also put aside for the moment that the GIII Iroquois S. has never been a prognosticator for success in the GI Kentucky Derby. Dating to the race's inception in 1983, juveniles who ran in that late summer/early autumn Churchill Downs stakes have gone a collective 0-1-1...

Approaching the start of the sixth week of the season at Delaware Park, a pair of apprentices--one a five-pound bugboy and the other still with his seven-pound allowance--are riding high atop the jockey standings. Through Saturday's racing, the Delaware win totals by Gabriel Maldonado (25) and Ederik Robles (18) matched the rookies' ages. Maldonado just finished a blast-off week that saw him winning nine races in a four-day span at three different tracks. On Wednesday, the five-pound apprentice tallied with the last of six afternoon mounts at Delaware, then traveled...

At 84-1 odds, Boys and Bullets (Uptowncharlybrown) was lagging in 11th and last place nearing the quarter pole in last Wednesday's eighth race at Parx when 10-pound apprentice jockey Francisco Martinez patiently started picking off half the field. By the time Martinez set down his gelding at the eighth pole, Boys and Bullets was gathering momentum, but still five lengths behind the frontrunner. As the line loomed, the pack tightened. With a hustling hand ride Martinez gunned for an inside split, then deftly readjusted his aim for a better hole...

The Week in Review by T.D. Thornton The annual Claiming Crown races were two weeks ago. But a surprise black-type feast for blue-collar campaigners took place over Thanksgiving weekend, when horses once claimed for tags as low as $10,000 and $16,000 ran away with three of five stakes at Laurel Park, and an 8-year-old gelding bought last year for $10,000 topped a blanket-finish trifecta of previously claimed sprinters in the GIII Fall Highweight H. at Aqueduct. The relic known as the Fall Highweight--in which nominees are assigned weights scaled several...

The Week in Review, by Bill Finley Even on a day when he merely worked out, Flightline (Tapit) was front-page news after his early morning breeze Saturday at Santa Anita. That's how much he has captivated the sport; it's the reason why everyone is so hopeful that his career does not end after the GI Breeders' Cup Classic and that his owners can resist immediately cashing in on the hundreds of millions he will make at stud. The group has collectively said that no decision will be made until after...

The Week in Review, by Bill Finley Reflections on an interesting weekend of racing: (*) No, Rich Strike did not win the GII Lukas Classic S. at Churchill Downs. A very game Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow) had a second surge and came back just before the wire to nip him by a head. But not only was there no shame in losing, this was the best race of Rich Strike's career-better, yes, the GI Kentucky Derby-and finally put to rest that he was a one-race wonder who just got lucky...

The book on training the modern racehorse goes something this: Give them at least six weeks off between races, start them no more than five times a year and never take a chance. It's a book that, apparently, Ken McPeek has never read. Among top-tier trainers, there is no one like him. He'll run fillies against the boys, run back in a week and he's not afraid to throw a 50-1 bomb into a race or, in the case of 2022 GI Belmont S. winner Sarava (Wild Again), a 70-1...

However the TDN looks upon itself introspectively, the daily readership of its North American content can probably deduce that without advertising revenues from the Thoroughbred breeding industry, it would be difficult for its publishers to put out such an excellent and comprehensive daily edition. The lead article in June 27th's issue by Bill Finley--"Do we really need so many stakes races?"--obviously comes from the writer's perspective more concerned with payoffs from exactas and trifectas than the majority of the TDN's readers. Bill says, "The problem is obvious. There aren't enough...

For the second year in a row, the GI Preakness S. was won by a fresh horse who didn't run in the GI Kentucky Derby. Since both of Saturday's top two Preakness finishers--Early Voting (Gun Runner) and Epicenter (Not This Time)--were publicly declared out of the GI Belmont S. even before the last of the crab cakes cooled at Pimlico, it will be up to another relatively rested horse to step up and snag the third jewel of the Triple Crown. That's not an unfamiliar scenario, and recent history tells...