Sue Finley

Chris Heyde is the founder of Blue Marble Strategy and is a Washington D.C. lobbyist who has dedicated his career to animal welfare issues. Along the way, he has had some important successes, including effectively ending horse slaughter in the U.S. But one main goal remains and has been elusive. Heyde has been fighting for passage of the Save America's Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act, which would prohibit the slaughter of horses in the U.S. as well as ban the shipping of them to slaughterhouses in the Mexico and Canada. Heyde...

I read with interest and a certain amount of confusion, Sue Finley's TDN article about the woes of Kentucky stallion studs. On the one hand, everyone is agreed that it is difficult to fill stallion books, and on the other, the idea of any book being full has long been consigned to the history books. When I worked at Ashford in the mid-90s, Woodman topped the active sires list ('96 or '97) and the size of his book caused scandalized conversation in some quarters. One breeder even told me it...

Only a courageous runner-up effort behind 'TDN Rising Star' and 3-year-old male Eclipse finalist Fierceness (City of Light) in the GI Travers Stakes this past August stood between Brookdale Racing Inc, Mark Edwards, Judy Hicks and Magdalena Racing's 'TDN Rising Star' Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) and a perfect season in 2024. But the enormously talented dark bay filly was utterly dominant against her own sex in 2024 and became the first female since Havre de Grace (Saint Liam) in 2011 to take home the coveted Horse of the Year statuette...

The Thoroughbred Daily News's Publisher and CEO Sue Finley and Columnist Chris McGrath both won 2024 Eclipse Media Awards from the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), Daily Racing Form, and the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters (NTWAB), according to a release from the NTRA on Wednesday. The 2024 Media Eclipse Award winners across six categories are as follows: Multimedia - Sue Finley, Thoroughbred Daily News, "After Saving Two Horses from a Kill Pen, Stewart Aims to do More to End Slaughter," July 15, 2024. Sue Finley produced a multimedia piece...

Strangely enough, the beginnings of my horse racing journey are tied to a racing-related contest put on by one of the local grocery chains in suburban Chicago in the 1970s where you'd watch a short clip at 6:57 p.m. and try to match your ticket for a can of Spam or something of the like. A few years later, a neighbor three doors down (kryptonite?) campaigned a mare called Diablo Morn with trainer Jerry McGrath, no great shakes (she finished her career 2-32, I just looked), but it gave me...

For the past two weeks, we have been telling you how some of racing's biggest names fell in love with the sport. Now it's our turn. Here are some of the stories behind the bylines you see every day in the TDN. Sue Finley, Publisher My parents both loved to go to the racetrack, and they would drag me and my brother when we were young. I was completely bored by it. But when I was 15, they told me that an 18-year-old jockey was going for the Triple Crown...

With a strong first day program which ran the gambit from the centrality of horse racing's societal license to the destructive use of xylazine to an update from the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit, horse racing investigators at the annual Organization of Racing Investigators were immersed in some of the most pressing issues affecting the sport. Hosted by Parx Racing and sponsored by everyone from Keeneland to the Breeders' Cup, over 100 specialists who protect racetracks in America and several other countries, listened, asked questions and made connections, all in...

With an expected record attendance of over 120 participants, the 28th annual training and networking conference held by the Organization of Racing Investigators (ORI) is set for Sunday, Mar. 3 and will run through Wednesday, Mar. 6 at Parx Racing in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. The TDN's CEO/Publisher Sue Finley will serve as the keynote speaker during the group's Monday evening dinner and awards ceremony, where her remarks will focus on horse racing, the media and integrity. Central to ORI is the pursuit of integrity and education for its members. Interactions among...

Michael Blowen had no money, no farm, no horses and no backers. But he did have an idea. He wanted to open a farm that would be a sanctuary for some of the sport's biggest names who were either gelded or no longer being used as sires or broodmares. Somehow moving mountains, he pulled it off and his Old Friends Farm became home to hundreds of Thoroughbreds and a popular tourist attraction. But now he has decided to retire, 20 years after he opened Old Friends, and turn the reins...

Two board members from the Organization of Racing Investigators (ORI) warmed up their vocal chords and shared a sliver of their vast expertise concerning the value of racing integrity teams during a panel at the Global Symposium on Racing, sponsored by the University of Arizona's Race Track Industry Program, this past week. Don Ahrens of Sam Houston Race Park and Jason Klouser of the Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission explained how these special squads, working alongside agencies like the Breeders' Cup, the U.S. Trotting Association, the American Quarter Horse Association...

Sue Morris Finley, Publisher & CEO of the Thoroughbred Daily News, spent her childhood driving back and forth to Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga with her family. In 1993, she was part of the team that took over the production of the Thoroughbred Daily News, and oversaw its move to Red Bank, NJ, becoming its co-publisher. For 12 years, she was the First Vice President of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, a national organization dedicated to the humane retirement of former racehorses, and served three years on the board of the Thoroughbred...

My sincere thanks to Ms. Sue Finley for the compelling article about the Man O' War Project  in the TDN Thursday. I whole heartedly appreciate Earle Mack's support of our veterans. I have only mentioned my own personal story about PTSD to a few people. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 my father left Columbia University and enlisted in the Air Force. He was 17, turning 18. He went to Officers Training School and was promptly shipped to the South Pacific to work in the intelligence corps....