Keeneland

With Breeders' Cup weekend at Keeneland right around the corner, 15 graded stakes--including seven 'Win and You're In' events--will take place throughout North America on an absolutely loaded day of racing Saturday. Five of those graded races will go down in Lexington, including a stacked renewal of the 'Win and You're In' GI Claiborne Breeders' Futurity. The overflow field of 14 (plus two AE's)'s lone graded winner, GI Hopeful S. hero and 'TDN Rising Star' Forte (Violence), bypassed last weekend's GI Champagne S. in favor of this first attempt around...

Chuck Simon, a trainer for two decades in horse racing who previously worked for legends of the game like H. Allen Jerkens and D. Wayne Lukas, has reinvented himself in the sport. After being squeezed out of the training game in part due to the rise of the "super trainer", Simon has become one of the most articulate critics of racing and advocates for the sport's reform, both on Twitter and the hit Going in Circles podcast, which he co-hosts with handicapper Barry Spears. Wednesday, Simon joined Bettor Things with...

Chuck Simon, a trainer for two decades in horse racing who previously worked for legends of the game like H. Allen Jerkens and D. Wayne Lukas, has reinvented himself in racing. After being squeezed out of the training game in part due to the rise of the "super trainer", Simon has become one of the most articulate critics of racing and advocate for the sport's reform, both on Twitter and the Going in Circles podcast, which he co-hosts with handicapper Barry Spears. Wednesday, Simon joined Bettor Things with Joe Bianca...

Well, that was one even I managed to see coming. With sterling bleeding at the bottom of the stairs, the most expensive yearling transaction of 2022 was duly enacted at Tattersalls this week. It was always going to be a wild market: Keeneland had shown the big spenders to remain impervious to war and inflation, while the local currency had been set aflame after new leaders sent home the babysitter and started playing with fiscal matches. Sure enough, Book I catapulted to giddy new heights, recording surges of 45 percent...

In this continuing series, we examine the past winners of significant filly/mare races by the lasting influence they've had on the breed. Up today is Keeneland's GI Darley Alcibiades S., a race with a number of notable producers to its credit. Keeneland's first president, Hal Price Headley, held that position until 1951. The next year, the Alcibiades S. was inaugurated in honor of his exceptional homebred two-time champion. The Kentucky Oaks winner was an even better broodmare than racehorse. Among her best foals were champion and influential sire Menow, while...

Keeneland opens its highly anticipated fall meet Friday with a trio of graded stakes that each provide the winners with a spot in the gate for the Breeders' Cup World Championships to be held in Lexington the first weekend of November. The highlight of the day will be the GI Darley Alcibiades S., a qualifier for the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies. Ken McPeek and Brad Cox have taken turns the last few years, each winning two of the last four, and McPeek has the morning-line favorite in last-out GIII...

Whit Beckman would be the first to admit that his stable did not get off to the remarkably-fast start he had dreamed of when he first set out on his own last fall. Going into this summer, he had just two wins on his training record. But, the pieces have fallen into place in the past two months as Beckman has sent five horses to the winner's circle, including three in just the past two weeks. Sabalenka (Good Samaritan) leads the charge of recent winners for Beckman and now looks...

Race Track Chaplaincy of America (RTCA) will kick off the Breeders' Cup World Championship week with the Night of Faith, Hope & Love, which will take place Tuesday, Nov. 1 from 5-6:30 p.m. at Keeneland in the Silks Lawn Chalet. All who are in town for the Breeders' Cup, along with area horsemen and horsewomen are invited to enjoy a great meal, a powerful message by guest speaker, the University of Kentucky's unanimous national player of the year Oscar Tshiebwe, and music. The Chaplaincy will also be celebrating it's 50th...

Keeneland has cataloged 3,691 horses for its 79th November Breeding Stock Sale, which will begin Monday, Nov. 7 after Keeneland hosts the Breeders' Cup World Championships over the weekend prior. The sale runs through Wednesday, Nov. 16. Click here for the catalog for the sale, which features proven producers, broodmare prospects who were successful racehorses and royally bred weanlings. The catalog includes more than 1,800 broodmares and broodmare prospects and 1,523 weanlings. Print catalogs are to arrive the week of Oct. 17. "The euphoria of the recent record-breaking Keeneland September...

New Vocations has launched its 13th annual Breeders' Cup Pledge, in which connections of Breeders' Cup contenders pledge a percentage of their earnings to support the charity. To date, the pledge has raised over $950,000 to support New Vocations. "This year's Pledge is extra special as New Vocations is celebrating its 30-year anniversary and the Breeders' Cup is being hosted minutes away from our main facility in Lexington," said Anna Ford, New Vocations Thoroughbred Program Director. "We are so thankful for the owners and trainers who have supported this important...

After airing in front-running fashion in Pimlico's Lite the Fuse S. with a career-high 105 Beyer Speed Figure earlier this month--his second straight triple digit rating--progressive 4-year-old sprinter Sibelius (Not This Time) is getting good at the right time. Just how good, exactly? That question will be answered in Keeneland's 'Win and You're In' GII Stoll Keenon Ogden Phoenix S. on opening day Oct. 7. "I'm a big believer in horses getting confident when they win," trainer Jerry O'Dwyer said. "When they back it up, back-to-back like he has, he's...

The phrase is traced to Bob Hope, apparently when challenged by a heckler during one of his military morale-boosters to explain why he wasn't in uniform. "Don't you know there's a war on?" he replied. "A guy could get hurt!" It would have been perfectly legitimate for one of the Keeneland auctioneers to respond in similar vein to the torrent of bidding that elevated the September Sale to unprecedented highwater marks. Somehow, the kind of factors that traditionally send markets into nauseous free fall have failed to stem a breathless...