Frank DeFrancis

In 1990, Frank DeFrancis and I introduced the idea which would become the American Championship Racing Series to D. Wayne Lukas. He had come to Pimlico with some top stakes horses to train post-Derby, as he often did. He won the Pimlico Special that year with eventual Horse of the Year Criminal Type. It was only 10 years since his first Triple Crown win at the 1980 Preakness, but he was now at the top of his profession. At Saratoga later that summer, Wayne and I had a lengthy conversation...

New investors at the elite level of our sport are clearly being well briefed in the odds they need to overcome. But if nobody can have failed to notice one operation pronouncing itself "Resolute," only gradually are people becoming as aware of another that had already been branded as "Determined." As we'll see, a certain staunchness is not only innate to Matt Dorman of Determined Stud but has also been fortified by experience, some of it as challenging as life can throw at us. The upshot is a conspicuous sense...