Week in Review

There were 13 graded stakes races run in North America Saturday and the combination of Bob Baffert, Chad Brown, Steve Asmussen, Brad Cox and Mark Casse won eight of them. That's three Hall of Famers and two future Hall of Famers. Not that any of this should come as a surprise. The so-called super trainer stables seem to only be getting bigger and more powerful by the day, leaving everyone else to fight over the leftover scraps. So what chance did Jason Cook have in the GII John A. Nerud...

Trainer Robert "Red" McKenzie doesn't get much ink south of the border here in the States, but he is a living legend on the western Canada racing circuit. With practically zero fanfare or notice, McKenzie added to his impressive list of lifetime accomplishments Friday night when he saddled Entitled Star (Roi Charmant), a 10-year-old mare he owns, to a 25-1 upset victory in a $4,000 claimer in the second race at Century Mile in Edmonton. The win was significant because McKenzie is 96 years old. The feat could very well...

Earle Mack is right. This industry, which is mired in a crisis, can no longer afford to ignore the most obvious solution to its problems, which are synthetic tracks. Mack wrote just that in an Op/Ed that appeared in this publication last week. If you haven't read it yet, please do so now. It is powerful, articulate and well-reasoned and was written by someone whose credentials demand that we respect his opinion. He is a horse owner, a breeder, a former U.S. Ambassador to Finland and a smart and successful...

Approaching the four-week mark to the GI Kentucky Derby, trainer Todd Pletcher has three highly ranked contenders, and the most impressive thing about that collective is that the Hall-of-Fame conditioner has guided them through undefeated 2023 campaigns to date, meticulously mapping out their schedules to avoid overlap. Divisional champ Forte (Violence), now 6-for-7, won Saturday's GI Florida Derby with a mad-dash flourish. 'TDN Rising Star' Tapit Trice (Tapit), the winner of the GIII Tampa Bay Derby, will be heavily favored to improve his 3-for-4 record with another score in Saturday's...

Saturday's two 100-point preps for the GI Kentucky Derby yielded a pair of colts who are polar opposites in many ways. Yet the stock is on the rise for both Two Phil's (Hard Spun) and Kingsbarns (Uncle Mo), as their respective scores in the GIII Jeff Ruby Steaks and GII Louisiana Derby are attracting attention while stamping both as legitimate mid-tier threats on the Triple Crown totem pole. Two Phil's ($150,000 KEESEP) has appeal as a 4-for-8 blue-collar closer/stalker whose strengths are versatility and adaptability. He's won sprinting and routing...

As Hall of Famer Wayne Lukas entered his mid-eighties, his longevity and his persistence became one of racing's best feel-good stories. A trainer who belongs in the conversation as one of the best of all time, he was still out there every day, physically active, mentally sharp. There didn't seem to be anything stopping him. But there was a missing ingredient. Lukas, now 87, simply wasn't winning many races, especially important ones. Lukas won the 2018 GII Risen Star S. with Bravazo (Awesome Again) on Feb. 17, 2018. He didn't...

On a Saturday that included bi-coastal graded stakes for sophomores, the most emphatic performance on the GI Kentucky Derby trail was orchestrated in a first-level allowance race at Gulfstream Park by Tapit Trice (Tapit). It wasn't just the eight-length blowout margin of victory or the 92 Beyer Speed Figure that made the athletic gray's effort stand out. It's the fluid, three-race progression and unruffled demeanor that suggests Tapit Trice is ascending his developmental arc while honing an air of confident capability. A $1.3 million KEESEP yearling owned in partnership by...

Right now within TDN's Top 12 rankings for the GI Kentucky Derby, seven horses are owned by multiple-entity partnerships. One syndicate maxes out at 10 individual owners, another at eight. If the horses from those larger partnerships (or other syndicates-there are plenty of them and they are growing in number worldwide) make it into the Derby field, they won't have to worry about getting the satisfaction and distinction of seeing their names in print as owners. But that's only because as a courtesy, Churchill Downs takes the extra step of...

The Week in Review by T.D. Thornton When Silver Seeker (Central Banker) made his second start off a nearly three-year layoff Saturday at Aqueduct, the betting public was skeptical of the Midwest shipper's chances, dismissing him at 19-1 in a second-level allowance/optional claimer for New York-breds. The price seemed about right if all you had to go on were the gelding's past performances, which showed just a ninth-place November prep at Hawthorne for Gene LaCroix, an obscure-to-horseplayers trainer riding an 0-for-30 losing streak that dated to Sept. 20, 2020. Bettors...

The Week In Review, By Bill Finley When Eric Camacho retired from riding in 2016, he thought he knew what his future would be. He'd work as an exercise rider in the mornings and step aside in the afternoons and let someone else get all the glory and the big paychecks. Never did he imagine he'd win another race, let alone get the mount on an undefeated 2-year-old who might just be good enough to be pointed toward the GI Kentucky Derby. But after Post Time (Frosted) won Saturday's Maryland...

The Week in Review by T.D. Thornton The annual Claiming Crown races were two weeks ago. But a surprise black-type feast for blue-collar campaigners took place over Thanksgiving weekend, when horses once claimed for tags as low as $10,000 and $16,000 ran away with three of five stakes at Laurel Park, and an 8-year-old gelding bought last year for $10,000 topped a blanket-finish trifecta of previously claimed sprinters in the GIII Fall Highweight H. at Aqueduct. The relic known as the Fall Highweight--in which nominees are assigned weights scaled several...

The Week in Review, by Bill Finley Winning Breeders' Cup races is supposed to be hard. Doesn't Charlie Appleby know that? The Breeders' Cup annually brings together the best trainers in the U.S. and many of the best in Europe. Wayne Lukas has won the most races, 20. Bob Baffert is next with 18. Chad Brown and Todd Pletcher are always forces. Aidan O'Brien brings a small army to the Breeders' Cup every year and has 16 winners to show for it, including three this year. But Appleby stands alone....