Horse Racing

Two summers ago, when six-time Eclipse Award-winning photographer Barbara D. Livingston acquired the entire five-decade archive of noted 20th Century racetrack photographer Jim Raftery, she thought the hard part would be getting the 300 oversized boxes from Florida to New York in the middle of a pandemic. Turns out Livingston was wrong. After two years of sifting through the massive collection, she said the truly "impossible task" ended up being having to select some 60 images out of more than two million for a just-opened exhibit titled "Jim Raftery: A...

Golden Sixty (Aus) (Medaglia d'Oro) joined the likes of Hong Kong legends Fairy King Prawn (Aus), Silent Witness (Aus), Ambitious Dragon (NZ) and Beauty Generation (NZ) in being named Horse of the Year in Hong Kong for the second consecutive season during ceremonies held Friday evening at the Hong Kong Jockey Club's Happy Valley Clubhouse. The 6-year-old won his first two starts of the year, including a facile defence of his title in the G1 Longines Hong Kong Mile in December, but suffered just the second loss of his career...

LBD Stable, Manganaro Bloodstock and David Ingordo's Tarabi (First Samurai) rallied down the center of Saratoga main track and finished strongly to take out Thursday's Wilton S., the first race contested out of the reconstructed Wilson Chute at Saratoga. Off as the 6-5 chalk, the $240,000 Keeneland September graduate was content to lay second through the early exchanges as Angitude (Violence), a bit reticent to load, showed the way in her first attempt at a distance of ground. Tarabi began to zero in on the front-runner as the field approached...

In this continuing series, we take a look ahead at US-bred and/or conceived runners entered for the upcoming weekend at the tracks on the Japan Racing Association circuit, with a focus on pedigree and/or performance in the sales ring. Here are the horses of interest for this Sunday running at Fukushima and Kokura Racecourses: Sunday, July 17, 2022 1st-FKS, ¥9,900,000 ($71k), Maiden, 2yo, 1150m ADVANCE PHAROAH (c, 2, American Pharoah--Fair Huntress, by Tiznow) turned in a promising debut when runner-up going seven furlongs at Tokyo June 19 (see below, SC...

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY - D. Wayne Lukas is back and so is the Wilson Chute, after a much, much longer absence, for the 154th summer of Thoroughbred racing in Saratoga. The 40-day season at historic Saratoga Race Course launches Thursday and runs through Labor Day, Sept. 5. It will be the 77th consecutive year of competition at Saratoga--since the closing for three years during World War II--which coincidentally makes it the second half of the very long run since the first meet was held in 1863. During the eight-plus weeks...

Just like riding a bicycle. Starting his first horses since serving a 90-day suspension issued by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, trainer Bob Baffert won the two races in which he had entered horses on the Saturday card at Los Alamitos. Baffert's victories included a win by High Connection (Connect) in the Los Alamitos Derby. It was Baffert's sixth straight win in the race that used to be known as the Swaps S. and his 12th overall in the mile-and-an-eighth contest. Baffert had last started horses on Apr. 2. Afterward,...

Well-supported at 39-10, Butterbean (Klimt) completed a most productive Saturday for the Ken McPeek barn, accelerating sharply three furlongs out before cruising home to a handy success in Saturday's GIII Iowa Oaks at Prairie Meadows. A convincing 5 3/4-length winner of the local Oaks prep in the June 11 Panthers S. over a mile, the chestnut was dragged back to last and dropped down onto the fence to caboose the field through an opening couple of furlongs in a solid :23.50. Content to bide her time in the rear, Butterbean...

In a stretch-long battle reminiscent of the 2019 GI Jockey Club Gold Cup, in which the Todd Pletcher-trained Vino Rosso (Curlin) was controversially taken down for interfering with the Shug McGaughey-conditioned Code of Honor (Noble Mission {GB}), the former's Dynamic One (Union Rags) outslugged McGaughey's 'TDN Rising Star' First Captain (Curlin) to eke out the victory in Saturday's GII Suburban S. at Belmont Park. The rail-drawn Untreated (Nyquist) hit the ground running and enjoyed an easy time of things up front, as defending champion Max Player (Honor Code) applied only...

In this continuing series, we take a look ahead at US-bred and/or conceived runners entered for the upcoming weekend at the tracks on the Japan Racing Association circuit, with a focus on pedigree and/or performance in the sales ring. Here is one horse of interest for Sunday running at Fukushima Racecourse: Sunday, July 10, 2022 5th-FKS, ¥13,400,000 ($98k), Newcomers, 2yo, 2000mT PSY BREAKER (c, 2, Uncle Mo--Downside Scenario, by Scat Daddy), a $400K purchase out of last year's Keeneland September Sale, is a half-brother to 'TDN Rising Star' Mutasaabeq (Into...

The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame will open two new exhibitions to the public July 14, coinciding with opening day of the Saratoga. Betting on America: The Immigrant Experience and the Hall of Fame will debut in the McBean Gallery, while Jim Raftery: A Turfotos Retrospective (from the collection of Barbara D. Livingston) opens in the von Stade Gallery. Betting on America: The Immigrant Experience and the Hall of Fame is an in-depth look the lives and impact on the sport of the Hall of Fame inductees...

In this continuing series, we take a look ahead at US-bred and/or conceived runners entered for the upcoming weekend at the tracks on the Japan Racing Association circuit, with a focus on pedigree and/or performance in the sales ring. Here are the horses of interest for this weekend running at Fukushima and Kokura Racecourses: Sunday, July 3, 2022 3rd-FKS, ¥9,900,000 ($73k), Maiden, 3yo, 1150m THEURGIST (c, 3, Ghostzapper--Orphea, by Medaglia d'Oro) was the most expensive of this outstanding sire's weanlings to sell in 2019, hammering to Paca Paca Farm on...

A year and a half after being signed into law, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) is expected to kick into action Friday, meaning a new uniform set of medication rules and safety standards that everyone can abide by--that, at least, was the plan. The execution has somewhat thrown those intentions to the wind in the near term, with a piecemeal approach to implementation that has seen the anti-doping and medication control arm of the program pushed back to early next year, and several other features of the law--such...