TDN Look

It's three days before Christmas, a time when most young Americans can be found lounging on the couch binging on Netflix and cookies, but Merlin Cano is busy on the backside of Churchill Downs. Most of the trainers have already packed up and headed for warmer climates. A few trucks roll by carrying used straw or unused hay, remnants of the hive of activity this backstretch was just a few weeks ago. All is quiet for now, but Merlin knows there is still much to be done. Merlin is a...

Five-time MLB All-Star Victor Martinez is following a dream with King Guillermo-- already a graded stakes winner who, after a seven-month layoff, is set to return to Grade I company.  King Guillermo (Uncle Mo) will be in a tough spot when he starts in the GI Cigar Mile H.at Aqueduct. The 3-year-old colt hasn't raced since May 2 and has never faced older horses. That's fine by his owner, retired MLB All-Star Victor Martinez. "I'm not a big believer in favorites," he said. [tdn_vimeo_embed title="Victor Martinez Talks on King Guillermo"...

There really is something about horses; it seems to be simply impossible to fall out of love with them. Craig Bandoroff tried once. Devastated after losing the use of his right arm in a horrific fall at Garden State Park in New Jersey in 1974 less than a year into a promising career as a jockey, Bandoroff decided he was done with the animals. He refocused his attention and enrolled at the University of Virginia-where he met, naturally, a professor that had horses. "I think, initially, I had the mindset...

   TDN is proud to partner with the Keeneland Library and the Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries in a very special collaboration: the Keeneland 'Life's Work' Oral History Project, a series of filmed interviews by TDN columnist Chris McGrath with significant figures in the Thoroughbred industry. An excerpt from current installment, with Dr. Gary Lavin, appears here. As Will Rogers said, the best doctors in the world are the veterinarians--because their patients can't talk. "And that's true," says Gary Lavin. "But at the same...

Cameron Beatty was at that stage in life--young, healthy, athletic, motivated, naive--where he never even imagined the possibility that everything he had could be taken away from him. He was the starting quarterback at Freehold Township (NJ) High School and had accepted an offer to play at Fairleigh Dickinson, where he had an academic scholarship. He was going places, and on the fast track. In an instant, everything changed. In 2010, Beatty, now 27, was on his way to the gym to workout when he had a motorcycle accident so...