If races at Saratoga and Del Mar last Saturday respectively identified the leading juvenile filly on either coast, they also measured a corresponding span of opportunity in the broodmare market. On the one hand, Mike Slezak found a tremendous bargain when acquiring the dam of GI Del Mar Debutante winner Miss Monica (Early Voting) for [...]

“Anyone can play our game,” says Sean Perl with a shrug. “So walk outside and raise your hand.” We're talking during the recent Fasig-Tipton July Sale: a recalibration, start of a new yearling cycle, but essentially just another variation of an infinitely repeating challenge, with Thoroughbreds of every kind, to come out the right side [...]

Cosmologists shake their heads pityingly if we cling to familiar concepts like “time” and “space” in asking how they chart the universe. Warp speed, for instance, apparently renders the idea of distance almost meaningless. As humble horse people, however, we can still bewilder science with a Starship Warpspeed of our own. Because who could get [...]

Perhaps the written word could only ever be adequate to such a milestone if Dr. Robert Copelan had himself persevered with his original course at Ohio State University, and instead become a journalist. As it is, TDN offers these meager paragraphs in joining countless others across our community saluting one of its most remarkable achievers [...]

Agreeing to differ is good. But how much better to discover that you differ only to agree. The other day I enjoyed a cheerful argument with a stud manager over what I considered his credulity regarding nicks. How could he encourage all these Wall Street types, accustomed to predicting other complex environments with software, who [...]

Last horse into the ring, in the first session; and then two within minutes next day. Three Into Mischief colts, all from the same consignment at the 2024 Keeneland September Sale. And how's that working out? Well, just Dandy. Hip 232 was Renegade, who beat his old neighbor Hip 181 Commandment half-a-length in the GII [...]

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. And if not rosebuds, then Hall of Fame trainers–or, come to that, Girvin foals. During his lifetime, some of us risked vexing the most self-effacing of trainers by suggesting that those preceding him to the Hall of Fame would consider the distinction devalued until also shared by John Shirreffs. [...]

A debut consignment of eight in the big catalogue at Saratoga? Saplings just don't spread that kind of shade. Only Heartwood is no sapling; nor even a graft of another tree. But while many of the fundamentals remain unaltered, from the land to the stock itself, a new name was imperative to show that one [...]

Getting your matings right is only ever a start. The babies then need to find their way into the right hands, generally something outside your control. But if there are degrees of expertise out there, you can at least be confident that the vast majority of our community will be reliably animated, first and foremost, [...]

She was already an older mare, and they have in fact lost her in the meantime. And, in this instance anyway, it was the pinhookers who made the big money. But that doesn't remotely diminish the emotional impact, for Taylor Made Thoroughbred advisor Hunter Houlihan, in seeing a daughter of All in With Aces (Quiet [...]

The stallions who entered stud in 2021 should really remain viewed as a work in progress, with only a third crop of juveniles joining the fray. Yet an impetuous commercial market had already made its judgement last year, when Tiz the Law was the busiest stallion in America, with 274 mares, while a stallion who [...]

Even after slaying Goliath, David still only had a sling. So while Lance Gasaway did once stun all the monster programs, if anything that only renders the odds of doing so again steeper yet. Not that he minds that. “My whole life, I've been an underdog,” Gasaway reflects. “Playing football in college, I was 175 [...]