Here’s my final Preakness toteboard:
WINNER – The Preakness and the sport of racing, which got enormous national publicity because the anticipated duel between the Kentucky Derby winner, Mine That Bird, and the brilliant filly, Rachel Alexandra. The story transcended the normal news outlets, even making the nightly network news programs.
LOSER – The management of Pimlico […]

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We had a couple of terrific human-interest stories coming out of Kentucky Derby weekend, but doggone if Big Foot – wealthy horseman Jess Jackson – didn’t step in, open his wallet, and pretty much ruin them both. Once again, the business side of the sport trumps the human side, to the detriment of an industry […]

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Here’s my final toteboard on the 135th Kentucky Derby:
WINNER – The American racing public. Everybody agrees the sport needs heroes. If Mine That Bird, a gelding, proves that his Derby form was no fluke, he’ll be a factor on the national scene as a 4-year-old and maybe even at 5.
LOSER – The Kentucky breeding industry. […]

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It has been years, maybe since Spectacular Bid in 1979, that we’ve had a Kentucky Derby favorite as overwhelming as, say, Rachel Alexandra was in yesterday’s Kentucky Oaks. She won so easily – her final margin of 20-plus lengths doubled the Oaks record – that she brought to mind what happened exactly a decade ago, […]

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The legendary writer Damon Runyon was such a big fan of jockey Earl Sande, the nation’s best  jockey of the 1920s and ‘30s, that he often was moved to write poems about him. One of Sande’s rival jockeys commented that it was bad enough getting beaten by Sande all the time, but Runyon made it […]

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LOUISVILLE – During his brief stay at Churchill Downs, the pride of Northern California has been regarded more as a curiosity than a legitimate contender for Saturday’s 135th Kentucky Derby. Everybody thinks it’s, well, sweet that weight-loss magnate Jenny Craig is the owner of a colt named Chocolate Candy. Just the other day a tourist […]

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LOUISVILLE – America needs for General Quarters to win the Kentucky Derby. It’s simple as that. At a time when the nation is suffering in so many ways, when the future is so uncertain, the country needs an old-fashioned feel-good story to remind us that dreams can be made real if you’re willing to work […]

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LOUISVILLE – As I was hanging around Barn 37, waiting for Tom McCarthy to finish grooming General Quarters, Bob Baffert came driving along in a huge SUV. Some of my colleagues waved at him to stop and Baffert obliged. I used the opportunity to walk over and congratulate him for being voted in the Racing […]

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He wore these aviator sunglasses, even before dawn, and he usually covered his suit and tie – Joe Hirsch always wore a suit and tie – with a trench coat, sometimes when it wasn’t even cold or raining. He kept an apartment in New York City, but that was just an address. Throughout his career, […]

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The Courier-Journal’s current series about the thoroughbred industry is a triumph of packaging over substance. It’s largely a rehashing of old material done up nicely with dramatic color photos, graphs, and charts. It will play nicely with the judges when it comes to contest time, which, of course, is the point.
But this isn’t to dismiss […]

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