This weekend, a New York-bred by the name of Private Emblem was set to gain a starting berth to the Kentucky Derby by way of Arkansas.
Private Emblem was among 11 3-year-olds entered in Saturday's Grade 2 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park, his first stab at graded company after wins in the Black Gold Handicap and a division of the Southwest Stakes this year.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Keeneland's select 2-year-old auction takes place Tuesday at 1:30 p.m., and, if its recent past performances are any indication, the sale may well produce financial gains. But with its largest catalog in several years and the general feast-or-famine trend of recent juvenile auctions, the Keeneland sale could also produce a buy-back rate above 30 percent, which would be in line with the general select juvenile market.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - War Emblem, the Illinois Derby winner whom Russell Reineman sold privately to The Thoroughbred Corp. this week, undoubtedly turned quite a profit for him.
Reineman, 84, bred War Emblem, who is by Our Emblem, on a $10,000 stud fee. He tried to sell the colt once before, at the 2000 Keeneland September yearling sale. The official sale records show War Emblem sold to Reineman's trainer, Bobby Springer, on a final bid of $20,000, but Reineman acknowledged that it was a buy-back.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - There seems to be a great deal of consternation about the contenders for the Kentucky Derby, but if the result were apparent beforehand, why bother to run the race? The Derby horses this year are not as inconsistent as the classic crop of 1974, when no colt seemed able to win two races in a row. And when the band plays "My Old Kentucky Home," either Came Home or Harlan's Holiday might be the favorite, and there will be three or four sensible contenders orbiting around them.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Gusty tailwinds helped produce some blazing times Monday afternoon at the first under-tack show for Keeneland's April 16 select 2-year-old sale.
Hip No. 4, a Touch Gold filly consigned by agents Tony Bowling and Bobby Dodd, flew three-eighths in 32.80 seconds. Two horses posted eighth-mile times of 10 seconds. A Grand Slam-Starr County filly blitzed the fastest quarter-mile, in 20.80. She is offered by Niall Brennan, agent.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Officer may have finished his 2-year-old season on a three-race losing streak last year, but he had already established himself as one of the top California-bred juveniles in history.
On Sunday, when he makes his 3-year-old debut in the $100,000 Zany Tactics Stakes at Santa Anita, Officer has a chance to restore his reputation on a national level. His 3-year-old campaign will also help to determine his place in the history of statebreds.
This year's first-quarter numbers for Florida's Thoroughbred industry indicate that if there was a negative impact from Sept. 11, it was of short duration. The only numbers that remain uncertain are those from the OBS mixed sales of both last October and January. Those two sales, however, were as much impacted by the lack of dispersals, e.g. Mockingbird Farm and Hooper Farm, as anything else.
Say Florida Sandy has his share of New York-bred championships, but had never won the state's Horse of the Year. But his 2001 campaign as a 7-year-old was too good for voters to overlook, so Say Florida Sandy earned his much-deserved Horse of the Year title when the winners for New York-bred championships were announced March 26 in Albany, N.Y.
Say Florida Sandy, bred by Sanford Bacon and owned by John Rotella, also added another sprinter and top older male title to his cache of past statebred awards.
Ontario may get its first training and sales facility. Members of the Ontario Thoroughbred and Standardbred industry will meet near the town of Milton in the middle of April to discuss the purchase of a parcel of land that might become the site.
Dr. John Brown, a director of the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society (Ontario division), is leading the charge for the construction of an industry center that would have a one-mile dirt track, an inner turf course, hundreds of stalls, and a sales pavilion with offices.
One of the racing industry's treasures is found in a most unlikely place. When you wind through the residential section of Bowie, Md., to reach the Belair Stable and Mansion museums, it is nearly impossible to fathom that more than 4,000 houses and many, many miles of paved streets cover the once immense estate that was Belair, a farm whose history goes back to the 1700's.
Until 1957, Belair was a lush paradise of 2,500 acres of fields, crops, and forests, and was home to some of the most illustrious Thoroughbreds ever produced on American soil.