Arthur Hancock

5th-LRC, $50K, Msw, 3yo/up, f&m, 6 1/2f, 6:03 p.m. ET. RABEEBA (Curlin) gets unveiled for owner Michael Lund Petersen and trainer Bob Baffert. A $750,000 Keeneland September grad, the 3-year-old filly has a younger full-brother in-training named Stone Aged who Juddmonte purchased for $450,000 during the 2026 OBS Spring Sale. The siblings' dam is Arthur Hancock mare MSP Chatham (Maria's Mon). Out of her 10 foals to race, she has eight winners, including current sire Air Force Blue (by War Front). Rabeeba's extended female family includes MSW Shea D Summer...

Dr. Bryan Boone passed away Wednesday after an 8 1/2-year battle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 63. During an accomplished career, he practiced at Hagyard-Davidson-McGee Equine Medicine and Surgery, where he specialized in reproductive equine medicine. "Dr. Boone had a wonderful career at Hagyard and had to retire early due to a neurological disorder," said Hagyard Medical Director Luke Fallon in an email to the TDN. "His family has a great story as he was an original descendant of Daniel Boone and multi-generational horse people. He worked for Stone Farm...

Racing journalist and horseman Josh Pons has been named the recipient of the 2024 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, presented by the Ryan family's Castleton Lyons, for excellence in thoroughbred racing literature published in 2024. He received the winner's $10,000 check during a Nov. 6 reception at the Lexington, Ky., farm. Pons won for 'Letters from Country Life: Adolphe Pons, Man o' War, and the Founding of Maryland's Oldest Thoroughbred Farm', a retrospective of the Golden Age of racing as viewed through a remarkable trove of correspondence to his grandfather,...

Arthur B. Hancock III, John Perrotta, and Josh Pons have been named finalists for the 19th annual Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, which celebrates excellence in Thoroughbred sports literature. Two of the titles, Hancock's "Dark Horses: A Memoir of Redemption" and Pons's "Letters From Country Life: Adolphe Pons, Man o' War, and the Founding of Maryland's Oldest Thoroughbred Farm" are biographies steeped in the family Thoroughbred history of each author. Perrotta, a lifelong horseman who has been a racetrack and stable manager, jockey agent and radio executive, joins the group...

Smarty Jones (Elusive Quality), winner of the GI Kentucky Derby and GI Preakness Stakes, leads a class of seven who will be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Friday morning. The champion 3-year-old of 2004, the lone selection in the contemporary category, joins racehorses Decathlon, Hermis and trainer George H. Conway, who were chosen by the 1900-1959 Historic Review Committee; and Edward L. Bowen, Arthur Hancock, III, and Richard Ten Broeck, who were elected by the Pillars of the Turf Committee. The induction...

Six semifinalists for the 19th annual Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award have been selected, by a panel of judges, representing excellence in thoroughbred sports literature published in 2024, Castleton Lyons announced Tuesday. These six titles illustrate the scope of the Book Award, including histories, biographies, a memoir, and two works of fiction. Per Castleton Lyons's release, the books "were chosen from nearly 20 submissions, an indicator that literature on horse racing remains very much alive despite thoroughbred industry controversies and the global economic hardships of recent years." Three finalists will...

1989 Horse of the Year Sunday Silence (Halo) has been named the 2025 Legend of Bourbon County. The award, given by the Legends of Bourbon County Thoroughbred Fund, will be part of the annual festival held October 11 and 12 in Paris, Kentucky. The festival will feature live entertainment, educational events and farm tours. "We are thrilled to honor Sunday Silence the 2025 Legend of Bourbon County, as well as partner with Stone Farm" said Lauren Biddle, chair of the Legends of Bourbon County Thoroughbred Fund. "His legacy, both as...

When it comes to Thoroughbreds, Arthur B. Hancock III has courted the bastard. Never much for floating the mainstream, he has celebrated in many a winner's circle, while knowing firsthand how wild oats can almost drown a man in a barrel of despair. If Mr. Hancock had not been an accomplished horseman or musician, he would have made one hell of a history professor. In the aptly-titled, just-published Dark Horses: A Memoir of Redemption, the author has penned something truly special--a reflection which looks back on a life well-lived. The...

According to one of his longstanding clients, Arthur Hancock, Dr. Robert Hunt may be only the third best veterinarian in Kentucky. So who are his two rivals? "Dr. Green," Hancock replies. "And Dr. Time." Besides these complementary therapies of grazing and rest, however, he is adamant that an ailing Thoroughbred could have no better helper in the Bluegrass than the Hagyard surgeon: a byword for dedication, integrity and horsemanship. Determinedly self-effacing as he is, Hunt readily acknowledges that Hancock's two other "doctors" have contributed much to his own work. In...

For me personally, what a weird coincidence that earlier this week, TDN published a wonderful essay by its columnist Chris McGrath, who spent time with three of the industry's "elder statesman," among them Ercel Ellis. For it was Ellis who, 40 years ago this coming week, made a decision that altered the course of my life. McGrath obviously had a wonderful time at Lil's Coffee House in Paris, Ky., listening to the yarns spun by Ellis, now 92, renowned veterinarian Bob Copelan (97), and the youngster of the trio, Stone...

by Sara Gordon and Katie Petrunyak  PARIS, KENTUCKY--Citizens of Bourbon County, Central Kentucky and beyond are banding together under a newly founded nonprofit organization to combat a proposed expansion of Bluegrass Station. Many are concerned that this project could involve the use of eminent domain, the government's power to purchase private property for public use, and local farmers and horsemen fear it would cause irrevocable damage to their environment and community. A 63-page report on the proposed expansion, which calls for the acquisition of an initial 2,000 acres for the...

Who knows what kind of Turf, never mind what kind of world, may be inherited by such of his 15 grandchildren as may themselves be blessed to reach the landmark they celebrate with Catesby W. Clay on Tuesday? But someday they will look back on the apt emergence, in his 100th year, of a fourth Kentucky Derby winner raised on the farm founded by his own grandfather, and see that the heritage of the race itself gained at least as much from Runnymede, in 2023, as the other way round....