ARCADIA, Calif. - There are only minor changes from last year on the 59-race stakes schedule for California-breds in 2002.
The main events - the California Gold Rush Day at Hollywood Park on April 28 and the California Cup on Nov. 2 - will return, offering high-caliber racing six months apart on days designed to showcase the breed.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The role of top California-bred racehorse will not be easy to fill in 2002.
With Tiznow, the two-time Breeders' Cup Classic winner, retired to stud in Kentucky, there is a gaping hole in the state's older-horse division.
There are many pretenders to the king's throne, but it is likely to take most of the Santa Anita meeting to reveal who deserves the top seed.
Tiznow made everything simple last year. As the first California-bred to win a Breeders' Cup race in the 2000 Classic at Churchill Downs, he was the one to follow in 2001.
ARCADIA, Calif. - What began as a teenage obsession has become a lifelong job for Cal Fischer, who has never ventured far from a racehorse in the last 50 years.
Fischer has owned and operated Madera Thoroughbred Farm in central California for 25 years, standing a few stallions and raising horses on a 160-acre property divided by the Fresno River.
He is not a retiree with an enviable bank account who considers horses a follow-up to a successful career. Instead, he has always been more comfortable in blue jeans and work boots, holding a shank attached to a yearling.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Composer has relocated from Dr. William O. Reed's Mare Haven Farm in Lexington to Doug Arnold's Buck Pond Farm in Versailles, Ky., for the 2002 season.
A 9-year-old Easy Goer stallion, he will stand for $3,500 in 2002. His first foals will be 2-year-olds next year.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Amidst the concern about drug use in racing, there is a realization that this issue has importance that goes beyond racing commissioners, veterinarians, trainers, and the tracks. It is of primary significance to breeders, who are potentially the most affected by the latent problems of medication in racing.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Slewpy, the California sire whose progeny included 1992 Breeders' Cup Sprint winner Thirty Slews, died on Wednesday at the Santa Lucia equine clinic in Santa Ynez, Calif.
The 21-year-old Seattle Slew horse, a top 20 California stallion, had stood at Monty Roberts's Flag Is Up Farms since 1996 and was advertised with a $2,500 fee for 2002.
Racing dates in Virginia are not as plentiful as many expected before the 1997 opening of Colonial Downs, the state's only parimutuel track. But there remains an abundance of optimism among the commonwealth's breeders and owners.
"We are banking on positive news on ways to increase handle in Virginia," says Debbie Easter, president of the Virginia Thoroughbred Association and general manager of Albemarle Stud in Free Union, Va.
Solomon Garazi is celebrating his 30th anniversary as a member of Florida's Thoroughbred community. A former Havana resident, Garazi, together with Fred Berens of Miami, owns SolRed Farm, located north of Ocala in Citrus, Fla. It is a 133-acre nursery with four stallions, and Garazi is the farm's chief boarder with 40 mares and 30 weanlings.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Twining, sire of Two Item Limit and nine other stakes winners this year, will return to his former home at Kentucky's Wimbledon Farm for the 2002 breeding season. A 10-year-old Forty Niner stallion, Twining has stood at Japan's East Stud on the island of Hokkaido since his private sale in 1999 and returns to Kentucky as part of a deal involving Coolmore Stud.