Affirmed

A TDN column published Sunday referenced the racing oddity of the two most recent North American champion 2-year-old colts both losing separate races within two hours of each other on June 7 at Saratoga Race Course. 'TDN Rising Star' Fierceness (City of Light), the 2023 juvenile male Eclipse Award champ, ran second as the 3-4 favorite in the GI Metropolitan Handicap. 'Rising Star' Citizen Bull (Into Mischief), the 2024 divisional champ, was fourth at 9-2 odds in the GI Woody Stephens Stakes. T.D. Thornton asked, "Has this ever happened on...

Patrice Jacobs Wolfson, who, along with her husband Louis, owned 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed, and several other star horses, passed away Tuesday at her home in Bal Harbour, Florida. The Wolfsons operated Harbor View Farm. The news was confirmed in a posting on the website of Riverside Memorial Chapels. Steve Wolfson, Patrice's stepson, told the Blood-Horse that she had been in declining health the past few years. "Patrice and Penny Tweedy were the first ladies of Thoroughbred racing of their time," he said. "It was a different time. It...

Legendary figures from the sport of horse racing are to be featured in a new podcast hosted by Ferrin Peterson. 'The Boundless Podcast' will feature interviews with Hall of Fame jockeys Steve Cauthen, Chris McCarron, Pat Day, and Sandy Hawley. Available on all recognized platforms, including Apple Podcast, Spotify, and YouTube, the series will kick off Jan. 16 with an hour-long interview with Cauthen, whose outstanding career in the saddle included a historic Triple Crown success on Affirmed in 1978, when he was just 18 years old, before he became...

How did we get hooked on this sport? We all have stories about how our love affair developed and blossomed. The TDN will be reaching out to numerous notable people in the industry to get their stories to find out how they got hooked and stayed hooked on the sport. Brian Spearman, Chairman, Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners Growing up in Saratoga, it's pretty inevitable that you're going to fall in love with horse racing if you love horses and you love the whole atmosphere. As a young adult, I went to...

How did we get hooked on this sport? We all have stories about how our love affair developed and blossomed. The TDN will be reaching out to numerous notable people in the industry to get their stories to find out how they got hooked and stayed hooked on the sport. Pat Day: I had no connection to horse racing when I was growing up. I wanted to be a bull rider. When I went to the rodeos, people would ask me did I ever think of becoming a jockey? I'm...

When he came to Europe, and rode them all to sleep, everyone said that Steve Cauthen had a clock in his head. If a Swiss watchmaker wanted to check his work, he could just ask Cauthen to go five-eighths in a minute flat. But all that precision seemingly ran askew when it came to counting his years, each of which might have compressed a decade. As Laz Barrera said, when the press asked him about keeping "The Kid" on his Derby horse: "Stevie Cauthen doesn't come from this planet. He's...

Beach Faulkner was at Keeneland one day when John Williams called him over and pointed at a horse being led off a van a couple of barns down. "Look at this," Williams said. "Watch him walk. You might as well put your name on the side of that horse." Beach remembers the great horseman's compliment with a smile. He's been working on horses' feet for 57 years, more than half of that time with son Tyler alongside, until he too has come to share the same mastery. They are farriers,...

If there was a Thoroughbred who ever needed legal counsel to mount an adequate defense of his life, then perhaps it would be Calumet Farm's MGISW Alydar. His battles with rival Affirmed as both a juvenile, and of course, through the 1978 Triple Crown are now the stuff of legend. However, what has clouded all those spectacular past performances came during his stallion career when he tragically died from an injury which was sustained while he was in his Calumet stall on a November night in 1990. Officially chalked up...

Nostalgia, they say, isn't quite what it used to be. In times past, it was not so much a wistful state of mind as an outright medical condition. The Union Army in the first two years of the Civil War reported precisely 2,588 cases, no fewer than 13 of which proved fatal. And I must admit to some concern that this may in fact be the version to which I am destined to succumb, nailed into the same coffin as the five-week Triple Crown. The whole premise of nostalgia is...

Secretariat vs. Flightline (Tapit): Who was better? "I think Secretariat would have beat him," Secretariat's jockey Ron Turcotte said of a hypothetical match up between the two legendary horses. "That's no knock against the other horse. He's a beautiful horse. Well put together. I can't fault him in any way. But he has hasn't done enough for me to say he is better than Secretariat." That's not to say that Turcotte isn't a Flightline fan. "He's a fabulous horse," he said. "We don't know how fast he could run." Turcotte,...

The FTBOA Florida Sire Stakes will return to Gulfstream Park with a series of races for 2-year-olds sired by accredited stallions standing in Florida from late summer through early fall. The $100,000 Dr. Fager, a six-furlong sprint, and the $100,000 Desert Vixen, a six-furlong dash for fillies, will kick off the 2022 FSS series Aug. 6. The $200,000 Affirmed will be contested at seven-furlongs Sept. 3, the same day as the $200,000 Susan's Girl for fillies. The $400,000 In Reality and the $400,000 My Dear Girl for fillies, the 1...

Classier (Empire Maker) kicks off his sophomore season versus four rivals in Sunday's GIII Affirmed S. at Santa Anita. The $775,000 KEESEP graduate got the 'TDN Rising Star' nod on debut sprinting at Santa Anita Oct. 24, then returned on quick notice with an eighth-place finish after showing speed in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile last time Nov. 6. Working bullets for his return, Bob Baffert takes the blinkers off for this. The Chosen Vron (Vronsky) tackles two turns for the first time here. The Cal-bred was impressive in his...