LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Bettors should have fun handicapping Friday’s Grade 2, $600,000 Eight Belles Stakes at Churchill Downs. The field is comprised of 12 3-year-old fillies, 10 of whom are coming off wins in their most recent starts at six different tracks.
Four NBA playoff games are on tap Tuesday night, including doubleheaders on TNT and NBA TV.
First-time customers wagering on the pro hoops action can take advantage of our current sports betting promo offers to collect up to a combined $7,000 in welcome bonuses (see below):
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It may not be what trainer Todd Pletcher wanted to do, but racing fans will get a treat when the Pletcher pair of Locked and Fierceness square off as part of a six-horse field entered in Friday’s Grade 2, $750,000 Alysheba Stakes at Churchill Downs.
While Pletcher was keyed in on this race for Locked, he was planning to have Fierceness make his seasonal debut in Sunday’s Grade 3, $175,000 Westchester Stakes at Aqueduct. Owner Mike Repole, who along with a bevy of family and friends at Churchill Downs this week, wanted to watch Fierceness run here.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Thorpedo Anna has been invincible in her own division since her juvenile finale in the fall of 2023. Her string of eight consecutive divisional victories – she finished second when facing males in the 2024 Travers – includes the 2024 Breeders’ Cup Distaff and a pair of one-sided tallies to launch her 2025 campaign earlier this season at Oaklawn Park.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Mark Casse prides himself on developing young horses through racing experience. He’s not especially worried about turning out flashy debut winners, instead training his charges to learn with each start and peak in big races.
“It’s something that I try to do – I try to get them to progress,” Casse said. “I’m not so much about the first or second race.”
When trainer Kent Sweezey claimed Air Force Cruising, a struggling maiden, for $30,000 at Churchill Downs in June, he did so with strong suspicion. It took six months to receive any validation, but when the gelding, sired by Group 1 turf winner Air Force Blue, returned in December and switched from dirt to synthetic, he burned up the track and hasn’t slowed down since.
Bellezza, a 4-year-old filly trained by Christophe Clement, will be a new face in a short field when she makes her North American debut in the Grade 3 Sheepshead Bay Stakes on Friday at Aqueduct. The stakes race, run at 1 3/8 miles on turf, is the first of the Belmont at the Big A spring/summer meet.
Clement’s Irish-bred filly spent the last month working at Payson Park training center in Florida, where assistant trainer Miguel Clement had the opportunity to prepare her.
Nebraska will no longer pursue legal online sports betting.
Sen. Eliot Bostar (D-District 29) on April 23 withdrew LR 20CA after he realized he did not have the necessary support to overturn a filibuster orchestrated by Sen. Brad von Gillern (R-District 04).
Bostar said he had 32 votes, one off of the 33 he needed.
Caesars Sportsbook customers in Colorado and Kentucky now have parimutuel horse race wagering available, just in time for Saturday’s Kentucky Derby and the upcoming Triple Crown races.
It launched Tuesday as Caesars Entertainment announced that the Caesars Racebook wagering interface has been integrated into the Caesars Sportsbook app in the states of Colorado and Kentucky.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – You conduct a phone interview with Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott. You ask a question. A second or two, nothing happens, that thick silence that cloaks a paused telephone conversation. Mott speaks. His answer is short, cursory. Another pause. Something more coming? You begin another query, gently prodding, but Mott has started talking again. He builds on his initial response. Pause. This time you wait. Mott resumes. The sentences expand. The door has opened.
