Bobby Frankel

In this TDN series, we curry lessons and wise counsel from veteran Californian figures who, like gold nuggets panned from the Tuolumne River in the High Sierras, have unearthed career riches on arguably the toughest circuit in the States. The series started with John Shirreffs and Art Sherman, and continues here with Eddie Truman, who announced his retirement last month. The land around Mulvane, Kansas, has been flattened as though by some colossal steamroller, and the vast, leafy battalions of maize and wheat and sorghum stretch outwards on and on...

A former assistant to Bobby Frankel and a licensed trainer for more than 50 years, Eddie Truman announced on Monday that he had sent his final horse to the track on New Year's Eve morning at Santa Anita—ending a racetrack run that dates back to the early 1960s. A winner of 763 races from 5,334 starters, with purse earnings of $15.7 million, Truman said that with his 77th birthday fast approaching Jan. 23, the time was right for him and his wife Elizabeth to step away from a way of...

Horses aren't supposed to be able to do what Ghostzapper did. The Hall of Famer was so dazzling that the 128 Beyer Speed Figure he registered in the GIII Philip H. Iselin H.--still the highest figure in the history of American racing at a route--isn't even remembered as one of his top races. Some people might count his GI Vosburgh sprinting at three against older horses as one of his best, others might prefer his GI Woodward battle over eventual Horse of the Year Saint Liam, and still others might...

Most of us, in this business, have experienced times when we would implore Jerry Amerman to leave that flier, promoting a horseracing syndicate, right where her husband John had thrown it--in the wastebasket. Happily, while they have sampled the full spectrum of the Turf's ups and downs in the 35 years since, their sense of fulfilment only continues to grow. And the sport has itself welcomed corresponding gains from their presence: John's judgement, seasoned by a stellar business career, has been drafted by numerous regulatory and benevolent bodies; Jerry's love...

Sent off the 27-5 fourth choice and only the second best-fancied of the three fillies in the race for trainer Chad Brown, Klaravich Stables' McKulick (GB) (Frankel {GB}) hit top gear with a furlong to race and ran out a facile winner of Saturday's GI Belmont Oaks Invitational S. to become the first American top-level winner for her all-conquering Banstead Manor-based stallion. With The Moonlight (Ire) completed a Frankel exacta, while the winner's commonly owned stablemate Consumer Spending (More Than Ready) finished with interest for third. It was a fourth...

Kentucky West Racing and Clarke Cooper's Classic Causeway stamped himself as a major GI Kentucky Derby contender Saturday when convincingly taking the GIII Sam F. Davis S. at Tampa Bay Downs for trainer Brian Lynch, and Tuesday, Lynch joined the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland. Sitting down with Joe Bianca and Bill Finley as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Lynch talked about his colt--one of the final horses by late superstar sire Giant's Causeway--provided updates on other top horses in his barn, reminisced about his time spent...

How ironic, that a man with a nearly anguished instinct for self-effacement should have left so indelible an impression on our walk of life--one he strolled so quietly that he insisted on registering his silks, with The Jockey Club in Britain, simply in the name of Mr. K. Abdullah. How many others who covet the Turf's great prizes, in contrast, elbow their way through the crowd in preening advertisement of their wealth and acuity? If we learn much about such people from their presumption of some deeper dignity, from a...

The trade winds, in the clipper age, blew west to east. But horsepower has reversed the flow; and for many years one of the most skilled navigators, for European horses to America, has been the debonair Michel Zerolo of Oceanic Bloodstock. The cargos are more contested nowadays, he says, with a lot of sharp traders driving up prices. But the fact is that Zerolo recently scaled a new pinnacle, with the G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe success of a Deauville yearling bought for an American patron. Sottsass (Fr) (Siyouni...

   In Part II of a two-part series, John Berry looks at Juddmonte's lasting influences from the late 80s through to the present on the 40th anniversary weekend of Prince Khalid Abdullah's first Classic win with Known Fact in the 2000 Guineas. Click here for Part I. When the mighty Dancing Brave (Lyphard) retired to stud, his brilliant 1986 G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe triumph shining like a beacon in the collective consciousness, it was generally felt that Prince Khalid Abdullah had probably reached the pinnacle of his ownership...

The TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland has transitioned to video over the past two weeks as the hosts record the show from home, and this week they welcomed their first video guest, none other than four-time defending Eclipse Award-winning trainer and future Hall of Famer Chad Brown. In a wide-ranging interview that touched on how the pandemic has affected his horses and family, what he looks for at sales, his feelings on clenbuterol, his thoughts on how to help smaller trainers get a foothold and his memories of...

To say trainer Chad Brown enjoyed a productive season in 2019 is an understatement of epic proportions. Fresh off collecting his fourth consecutive Eclipse Award as the nation's leading trainer, the 41-year-old is also responsible for a pair of divisional winners--Horse of the Year and Champion Turf Horse Bricks and Mortar (Giant's Causeway) and Champion Female Turf Horse Uni (GB) (More Than Ready). TDN's Christina Bossinakis sat down with Brown to reflect on the past season and to get a look at what 2020 may hold. TDN: Can you tell...

Mahmoud is interred in the same soil. So, too, are Broomstick and his son Whisk Broom II--both born in the first years of the last century; Tom Fool, Vaguely Noble, Blushing Groom; the great matriarch La Troienne. Stop The Music, the horse who owed his Champagne S. success to the disqualification of Secretariat, lasted to 35 before he had to be euthanized in 2005. And let's not forget The Axe, gray son of gray Mahmoud: the sire of Foggy Note, fourth of nine gray dams behind the farm's modern colossus...