Bob and Beverly Lewis

She is not the oldest living Eclipse Award winner--that honor is believed to belong to 1994 Champion Turf Female Hatoof (Irish River {Fr}), who is still going strong at Darley's Gainsborough Farm at age 36--but she's close. As the hours tick down before the newest class of champions are honored Thursday evening, it's a thrill to remember 1995 Champion 3-Year-Old Filly Serena's Song (Rahy--Imagining, by Northfields), who just turned 33 at the Bandoroff family's Denali Stud near Paris, Kentucky. This year the sport celebrates the 30-year anniversary of her spectacular...

The late owners Bob and Beverly Lewis, universally beloved in the industry and honored with the Eclipse Award of Merit in 1997, got their third and final Breeders' Cup win with Folklore, made all the more special as she was a homebred. Although they used a variety of trainers, all three of their of their Breeders' Cup wins were with D. Wayne Lukas. "We partnered with WinStar on Tiznow and Folklore was in his first crop," said Mark Taylor of Taylor Made Farm, where Folklore was raised. "She was bred...

A colorful pioneering family of bloodstock agents, horse traders, bronc riders and trainers has lost a mainstay in Thomas R. Bell, Jr. who passed away Friday night at age 93. "Three generations [of Bells] were responsible for two Kentucky Derby winners," said his son, trainer Thomas R. Bell II, known as Ray. Bell and his father, the World Champion rodeo cowboy Thomas R. Bell, purchased Tomy Lee, who won the 1959 Kentucky Derby for trainer Frank Childs. Ray Bell selected Charismatic as a weanling for Bob and Beverly Lewis. The...