Seabiscuit

Jockey Flavien Prat had himself a year in 2024 on the way to his first Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey. How good was he? He set records for Stakes wins (82) and Graded Stakes wins (56). He won the Breeders' Cup Classic. He won 16 Grade I races. The list could go on, but he has turned the page. He will make no predictions for 2025. The 32-year-old French native just wants to keep on riding. He sat down with Tim Wilkin to talk about life as a top jockey...

Bill duPont's program today is much smaller than it was back in the 1980s, when he stood 15 stallions across three continents. Nonetheless all his experience keeps telling in a fashion very hard to emulate for anyone now trying to fill that kind of space. Under the banner of Pillar Properties Services Inc., duPont bred GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies runner-up Vodka With a Twist (Thousand Words) from a $6,000 mare. Then there's Irish Maxima (Maximus Mischief), whose recent graded stakes breakout at Aqueduct was her eighth win in 11....

With breeding sheds opening last week across North America, farms have been quietly preparing stallions for the demanding months ahead of them. All jokes about them having the best jobs aside, stallions have to be ready for a marathon during breeding season. It's not simply a matter of bringing stallions up from fields and expecting them to be ready to cover a full book of mares over the ensuing months. Perhaps that may work for small operations where a stallion covers a handful of mares all season, but for the...

Leon Blusiewicz, a retired trainer whose charisma, enthusiasm and knowledge of Thoroughbred pedigrees far eclipsed his winning percentages, died Nov. 26 in a Maryland hospital while under hospice care for kidney failure. He was 92. David Grening of Daily Racing Form first reported Blusiewicz's passing on Sunday, recalling that the veteran conditioner stood out as a "Damon Runyon-type character." Beyond being a Grade I-caliber backstretch storyteller with a penchant for weaving colorful racetrack tales, "Blu" was known for his keen eye for horsemanship, and his reliance on old-school conditioning methods...

A permanent exhibition featuring photos, paintings, and tack of Hall of Famer Seabiscuit will be created in his original stud barn, which will also include a theatre with ongoing films, according to the Seabiscuit Heritage Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Seabiscuit's legacy. The barn itself is from the 1930s and is listed as a National Historic Site. The exhibition will open Saturday, May 27 at 11 a.m. with a ribbon cutting ceremony, a presentation of the Seabiscuit Heritage Foundation's mission, and a tour at Ridgewood Ranch near Willits...

Just six days after the passing of his owner Burt Bacharach, Afternoon Deelites, a six-time graded-stakes winner, was euthanized Feb. 14 at Old Friends, the Kentucky-based Thoroughbred retirement farm, due to complications from colic. He was 31. Old Friends President and Founder Michael Blowen announced his passing Wednesday morning. The dark bay stallion, who was the farm's oldest resident, was just two weeks shy of his 31st birth date. Bred by Blue Seas Music Inc., the son of Private Terms--Intimate Girl, by Medaille d'Or, was foaled in West Virginia on...

Racing is famously described as living in its own little bubble. (People often say this crossly, with exasperation.) And it is, in many ways, a world of its own. It is so specialised and so absorbing and so difficult to understand for those outside it. It even has its own language - arcane technical terms and ancient slangs which few people beyond Newmarket and Lambourn understand. Yet racing people are also human people. They do live in the real world. They watch the news. They feel the terrifying clashes of...

Popcorn Deelites, one of several Thoroughbreds used to portray the legendary Seabiscuit in the 2003 Oscar-nominated film, passed away from complications of colic at the age of 24 at Old Friends Retirement Farm in Georgetown, Kentucky. The son of Afternoon Deelites had a modest racing career, mostly in claiming contests, and had resided alongside his sire at Old Friends since 2005. 'Pops', who bore a strong resemblance to Seabiscuit, appeared in several scenes in the film, including the match race against Triple Crown winner War Admiral. He returned to training...

Seabiscuit: Three Men and a Racehorse by Laura Hillenbrand While many of us will have watched the Oscar-nominated film adaption of the book which does no disservice to Hillenbrand's novel, you would truly be missing out if you didn't spend the time to read her excellent story. Set in 1930s America, Seabiscuit is a true underdog story about a crooked-legged horse who was transformed by the mysterious trainer Tom Smith, the half-blind jockey Red Pollard and overnight millionaire owner Charles Howard. Each character comes with their own fascinating story and...