Royal Ascot

Churchill Downs has scheduled 50 stakes races cumulatively worth a record $26,175,000--a $525,000 increase--for its 2025 Spring Meet, which covers 43 race dates between April 26-June 29, the track said in a Friday press release. The American Turf for 3-year-olds, annually staged on the Kentucky Derby undercard, had its purse raised to $1 million after the American Graded Stakes Committee elevated the 1 1/16-mile grass race to Grade I status. The American Turf is one of four Spring Meet stakes that received purse hikes for 2025 and one of seven...

Mark Fahey speaks about potential stable star Tina's Indian - plus a lively outsider for the trainer at the Cheltenham Festival  Trainer Mark Fahey has revealed that he is dreaming of Royal Ascot for potential stable star Tina's Indian (Ire) (Calyx {GB})-but first, the man who is widely regarded as one of the sharpest young trainers in Ireland is taking aim at the Cheltenham Festival with the battle-hardened hurdler Flicker Of Hope (Fr) (Buck's Boum {Fr}), and is quietly confident of hitting the back of the net. Flicker Of Hope...

It was announced on Wednesday that Ascot Racecourse, the Jockey Club and Churchill Downs have agreed an extension of the 'wild card' entry initiative launched last year that ties together Royal Ascot, the Betfred Derby Festival at Epsom and the Kentucky Derby meeting at Churchill Downs. Last year a runner from each of the GII Edgewood Stakes for three-year-old fillies and the GII American Turf Stakes for three-year-old colts received an entry for the Betfred Oaks and Betfred Derby, respectively. That will again be the case this year, while an...

Last year's King George hero Goliath (Ger) will make his 2025 bow in Hong Kong on Champions Day, Apr. 27, according to an X post by the gelding's co-owner, John Stewart of Resolute Racing. Stewart purchased a majority share in the son of Adlerflug (Ger) after he landed the G1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes for trainer Francis-Henri Graffard last summer. Geldings remain barred from participating in the G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. "I am dedicated to international racing at the highest level," Stewart told TDN Europe....

We have seen him race just six times to date and there is good reason to hope that the best could still be to come for the strapping four-year old Economics (GB) (Night Of Thunder {Ire}). Whatever else he goes on to achieve, it would be hard to surpass the delight he delivered for Shaikh Isa Salman Al Khalifa in securing his first Group 1 triumph in the race sponsored by the owner's home nation, the Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes. The mind of the colt's trainer William Haggas is...

Straight-track specialist Isthmus (Aus) (I Am Invincible {Aus}) has been handed the G1 Black Caviar Lightning and G1 Newmarket Handicap as targets during the Australian autumn, according to Racing.com. If she continues to excel, the G3 Furphy Sprint heroine will have punched her ticket to an engagement at Royal Ascot in June. The bay won her 800-metre heat during the Caulfield jumpouts on Wednesday morning. She broke her maiden at second asking in a handicap at Moonee Valley in March of last year. After four starts at two, Isthmus resumed...

In racing circles, trainer Jose D'Angelo might not yet be a "household name," but that's not going to last much longer. In this country for about five years, the native of Venezuela is coming off a stellar 2024 in which he won 140 races, including his first Grade I with Howard Wolowitz (Munnings) in the Aristocrat Franklin-Simpson Stakes. And it looks like 2025 might be even better. He has a stable full of potential stars that includes 'TDN Rising Star' Guns Loaded (Gun Runner), the winner of last Saturday's Mucho...

It may be the season to be jolly, but it's also a time of reflection, and there are many ways one can look back on a first-season sires' championship in Britain and Ireland that was ultimately dominated from start to finish by Whitsbury Manor Stud's Sergei Prokofiev.  The cool thing to say about this year's championship was that none of the new stallions seemed to be standing out from the crowd like Blue Point (Ire) and Havana Grey (GB) had done in previous years.  That may well be true, but...

A leading trainer in his native Venezuela, Jose D'Angelo decided that it was time to "head to the big leagues," and relocated to South Florida in 2019. After having GIII Sam F. Davis Stakes winner No More Time (Not This Time) on the GI Kentucky Derby trail this spring, winning his first career Grade I with Howard Wolowitz (Munnings) in the Aristocrat Franklin-Simpson Stakes at Kentucky Downs in September, and recording second-place finishes on the biggest of stages with Gabaldon (Gone Astray) in the Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal Ascot...

3rd-GP, $60k, Msw, 3yo/up, 6 1/2f, 1:18p.m. ET Fashionably late to the party, but making it to the races for the partnership of WinStar Farm, Siena Farm, and Rockridge Racing, TUCSON (Constitution) seeks to validate their patience against a field of experienced maidens over the main track. Hammered down for $1.3-million at KEESEP in 2022 but later having to be resold by Keeneland the following spring, the chestnut has been working steadily for Todd Pletcher out at Palm Beach Downs. A half-brother to Grade I-winning and Royal Ascot Group 1-placed...

Julien Leparoux, a two-time Eclipse Award winning rider, collected his 3,000th career win aboard Pike Place (Street Boss) in the third race at Churchill Downs on Thursday, the track said in a press release that same day. Leparoux, 41, launched his career in 2005. Raised in Chantilly, France, Leparoux's passion for horses led him to Southern California in 2003, where he began as an exercise rider for trainer Patrick Biancone. He transitioned to race riding and earned the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Apprentice Jockey in 2006. Three years later he...

"We bought the bar with a credit card," recalls Ken Donworth. "Forty thousand bucks, credit card debt at 20 percent. And we paid it off in three or four months." He shakes his head. "That was 1998. I don't think I'd do it now. So we did take risks, no doubt. But we didn't get caught on any of those slippery slopes." On the contrary. In a college town like Lexington, Donworth and his partners soon figured that policing their customers' age was more trouble than it was worth. So...