Kentucky Downs

Some of the most highly anticipated races during the summer racing season are the 'baby' races during the boutique meetings at Saratoga and Del Mar and at Kentucky Downs, which attract its fair share of high-priced offspring from a variety of top national outfits. Summer Breezes highlights debuting and stakes-entered 2-year-olds at those meetings that have been sourced at the breeze-up sales earlier in the year, with links to their under-tack previews. Here are the horses entered for Saturday at Saratoga, Kentucky Downs and Del Mar: Saturday, August 31, 2024...

7th-SAR, $100k, Msw, 3yo/up, 1 1/16mT, 4;28 p.m. ET WHEELHOUSE (Tapit) was knocked down to Steve Young for $600,000 at the 2023 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Sale and makes a belated first trip to the races for Harrell Ventures and Gainesway. The March-foaled chestnut is a son of Lady Pewitt (Orientate), whose daughter Jaywalk (Cross Traffic) won the 2018 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies en route to an Eclipse Award, and whose multiple stakes-winning daughter Danzatrice (Dunkirk), the dam of Grade I-winning 'TDN Rising Star' Tapit Trice (Tapit). This is the extended...

For the last several years, Kentucky Downs has been the track that had almost everything. Big fields, huge purses and a betting handle that increases exponentially every year. But one thing has largely been missing--European shippers. Despite an all-turf meet, the purses and the fact that Kentucky Downs is much like a European turf course, the meet hadn't really registered with European horsemen. That has changed. According to Martin Panza, the co-director of racing at Kentucky Downs, which kicks off its annual seven-day meet Thursday, as many as 16 European-based...

Some of the most highly anticipated races during the summer racing season are the 'baby' races during the boutique meetings at Saratoga and Del Mar and at Kentucky Downs, which attract its fair share of high-priced offspring from a variety of top national outfits. Summer Breezes highlights debuting and stakes-entered 2-year-olds at those meetings that have been sourced at the breeze-up sales earlier in the year, with links to their under-tack previews. Here are the horses entered for Thursday at Saratoga and for the first of six days of racing...

When it comes to racing, breeding and sales, Justin Wojczynski has done just about everything. He's been a pinhooker, he's broken horses for others and prepared them for the races, he's handled layup horses and he's been a trainer. One might think that's plenty, but Wojczynski is intent on expanding his stable of race horses while keeping his other side jobs. That might sound like a lot, but it has been made easier by the emergence of the 6-year-old mare Awesome Treat (Awesome Patriot). In her last start, she sprung...

A Trio of European horses running at Kentucky Downs this weekend hit the track for the first time after clearing quarantine at Churchill Downs Monday morning. Bellum Justum (Ire) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) and Stromberg (GB) (Iffraaj {GB}), who came over for Saturday's $3.1 million DK Horse Nashville Derby, and 2-year-old Black Forza (Complexity), slated for Sunday's $1-million Kentucky Downs Juvenile Sprint, went out together at 9 a.m. ET for some light exercise. They are scheduled to take a two-hour van ride to Franklin, Kentucky after training at Churchill Tuesday...

Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) deserves all the credit in world for her game performance in the GI DraftKings Travers Stakes. Facing off against one of the toughest Travers fields in memory, she beat everyone but Eclipse Award winner Fierceness (City of Light), losing by a diminishing head. She finished ahead of the GI Toyota Blue Grass winner and GI Kentucky Derby runner-up Sierra Leone (Gun Runner) and GI Belmont S. and GI Haskell S. winner Dornoch (Good Magic) and four other males. It was a special effort by a special...

Kentucky Downs Vice President of Racing Ted Nicholson may have the easiest job in racing, which he'll readily admit. Thanks to the popularity of the Historical Horse Racing Machines, he's got a boatload of money to spend. Every year, it's the same thing...he has to decide where and how to spend millions of dollars. How do you divide up the money and which races deserve a purse increase? "Business has been very strong on the gaming side," said Nicholson, this week's Green Group Guest of the Week on the TDN...

Kentucky Downs is offering massive purses this year--even more massive than usual--and their VP of Racing, Ted Nicholson joins the hosts to discuss how the track pulls it off.

By winning last Sunday's GI Saratoga Derby Invitational, Carson's Run (Cupid) secured a spot in the AUS$5-million Ladbrokes G1 W. S. Cox Plate on October 26 in Australia. In U.S. dollars, the race is worth about $3.3 million. It's an invitation his connections  are seriously considering. "We're interested," said Terry Finley, the managing partner of West Point Thoroughbreds, which owns the horse with Steven Bouchy. "It is a very lucrative package. I haven't talked to (trainer) Christophe Clement about it yet but we are definitely game. That's an awful lot...

Kentucky Downs will play host to the inaugural FanDuel TV U.S. Open Turf Championships Sept. 7. The event will feature six graded stakes races offering over $2m apiece for Kentucky-breds. In addition to the three Breeders' Cup 'Win and You're In Races', Kentucky Downs will pay the pre-entry and entry fees towards the Breeders' Cup for the winners of three additional stakes should they make a Breeders' Cup field at Del Mar Nov. 1-2. FanDuel TV has also been announced as the title sponsor for the GII FanDuel TV Kentucky...

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y.--With his romp through mud in the opener at Saratoga Race Course Saturday, Reach for the Rose (Audible) hit the target that owner-breeder Ken Ramsey and trainer Saffie Joseph were aiming at. The 5 1/2-length victory in a $100,000 maiden special for 2-year-olds that had been taken off the turf gave colt his first career win and earnings of $55,000. Far more important for Ramsey and Joseph, the win in the one-mile race against three foes is a stepping stone to the $1 million Kentucky Downs Juvenile Sept....