If Saturday had been all about the local heroes, by Sunday the major prizes were scattered more widely as first Jancis then True Love smuggled the silverware across the Irish Sea.  For the combined team of Ballydoyle and Coolmore, winning European Classics has become almost commonplace – a key part of the mechanism that keeps [...]

Those who say Flat racing lacks atmosphere need to wake up and get to Newmarket. No winner at the Cheltenham Festival has been cheered in to the enclosure more vociferously by a sell-out crowd than the 2,000 Guineas hero Bow Echo and his fellow young bucks George Boughey and Billy Loughnane.  At the age of [...]

Darley EBF Fillies' Maiden winner Earth Shot had been second to her stable-mate My Ophelia (Sea The Stars) on her sole start prior to Friday but she took a major step forward on livelier ground at Newmarket to keep the Oaks dream alive for owners Paul and Sally Flatt of Childwickbury Stud. Owner-breeders in their [...]

Zanthos continued her preparation for the Poule d'Essai des Pouliches a week on Sunday with a racecourse gallop on the Rowley Mile under Oisin Murphy on Thursday morning.  Watched by trainers Simon and Ed Crisford, Victorious Forever's racing manager Chris Wall, and Anthony Stroud, who bought the daughter of Sioux Nation for €1 million at [...]

Newmarket is bursting with talent this week and not just of the four-legged variety. Visitors to the town for the sales and racing can also take advantage of the art scene with a stunning new exhibition of the Society of Equestrian Artists (SEA) having just opened in the National Horseracing Museum. Celebrating the 40th anniversary [...]

It has been done before: victory at Southwell in November, third in the Fred Darling, win the 1,000 Guineas. That was the route taken by the Roger Varian-trained Elmalka (Kingman) two years ago when she won the fillies' Classic at 28/1 on just her third start, and with that in mind it is perhaps worth [...]

NEWMARKET, UK — Rain has been in short supply in Newmarket for weeks but if the weather can be seen as a metaphor for George Boughey's mood then the spotless blue sky of Monday morning was a pretty good one.  And why shouldn't this 34-year-old be upbeat? After all, his training career, which got underway [...]

Members of the racing community gathered with politicians at the National Horseracing Museum on Thursday for the launch of the Newmarket Thoroughbred Racing and Breeding Industry Forum's (NTRBIF) strategy aimed at maximising “the potential of Newmarket's global status as the home of horseracing”. A document entitled 'The Case for Newmarket' includes a five-point plan focusing [...]

The thrilling, fleeting moments of watching a horse win can be enough to sustain a breeder throughout tougher or more mundane times. And so it was when TDN got on the blower to Mark Dreeling that we found him mucking out while still able to exude excitement in the yarn of how he and his [...]

Whether the Classic picture is any clearer this week than last is debatable but what the last seven days have brought us is some truly impressive performances to savour. And it is hard to pick just one, though it has to be said that Portcullis's Wood Ditton run was visually the most spectacular for all [...]

John Warren was doing his level best to suppress his excitement, but even a longstanding racing manager who has been privy to the highs and the lows of the sport has to crack after witnessing a performance like that of Portcullis in the Wood Ditton Maiden Stakes at Newmarket. The colt's breeder King Charles III [...]

That's the ticket. Some black-type action on the Rowley Mile and the scent of Classics on the wind.  It's pleasing to report that there were plenty of happy breeders at the racecourse on Wednesday, perhaps none more so than Graham Smith-Bernal and Craig Bennett of Newsells Park Stud and Merry Fox Stud respectively, who were [...]