LAS VEGAS - In a "normal" year, the Wood Memorial Stakes, Blue Grass Stakes, and Arkansas Derby are designed to be preps for the big prize, the Kentucky Derby.
Not this year.
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DRF Past Performances
LEXINGTON, Ky. - European champion In the Wings, winner of the 1990 Breeders' Cup Turf and sire of 1996 grass champion Singspiel, died Saturday at age 18.
Laminitis had plagued the Sadler's Wells stallion during the last month. Officials at Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum's Kildangan Stud in Ireland decided to euthanize him after his condition declined "to spare him further pain," according to a statement issued by Kildangan manager Joe Osborne.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Having shaken the dust of Dubai off his heels, Pleasantly Perfect now has won the two richest dirt races in the world: the Dubai World Cup and the Breeders' Cup Classic. There is no doubt that he is a very good horse at 10 furlongs, and he showed the versatility in the Dubai World Cup on Saturday to lie close to the pace and then duel head and head with Medaglia d'Oro for about the last five-sixteenths of a mile.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Mare abortion rates in central Kentucky are no longer alarmingly high, as they were during the mysterious mare reproductive loss syndrome in 2001. But the drop in abortion rates hasn't made breeders or researchers any less vigilant about the Eastern tent caterpillar.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The rise of McCann's Mojave to the status of multiple stakes winner this year at Santa Anita would have seemed improbable at times.
His dam, Joni U. Bar, was 20 when she foaled McCann's Mojave, having suffered through a severe bout of colic the previous year that resulted in the loss of a foal.
After McCann's Mojave was born, the colt was rushed to an equine hospital, suffering from diarrhea that left him in critical condition. The incident caused him to be weaned from his dam earlier than normal.
Meadowbrook Farm near Ocala is in the process of being sold to the Hyperion Training Center LLC, the business entity of Daniel and Diana Case. According to Daniel Case, the Cases have started a variety of businesses including real estate development, trucking, and mortgages. Since arriving in Florida recently from Paradise Valley, Ariz., the Cases said they have been involved in several development deals, including an effort to buy Noel and Bobby Hickey's Irish Acres Farm. That deal did not fly, according to Daniel Case, because of zoning problems.
With 2-year-old racing set to begin shortly in New York, more than a dozen freshman sires standing in the Empire State will be represented by juvenile runners this year.
Here's a look at some of those New York freshman sires:
Badge (Air Forbes Won-Revenge Time). A winner at 2 and 3, Badge won at distances ranging from six furlongs to a mile and 70 yards. As a 3-year-old, Badge won the Grade 3 Gotham Stakes and finished third in the Grade 1 Preakness.
"It's like hitting the lottery and losing the ticket," said Tom Graul, after a horse he bred - 5-year-old Our New Recruit - rose from obscurity to win last weekend's Group 1, $2 million Dubai Golden Shaheen.
Graul, the proprietor of an upscale supermarket in Hereford, Md., sold all of his horses two years ago, as the result of a divorce. He also sold the 81-acre farm, Manor Glen, in Monkton, where Our New Recruit was born.
LAS VEGAS - Four weeks away and counting.
The Kentucky Derby is limited to 20 starters based on earnings in graded stakes, and time is running out for the 3-year-olds who need to acquire sufficient earnings to be included in what is expected to be a full and wide-open 20-horse field for this year's Derby. The horses in Saturday's Santa Anita Derby and Illinois Derby are having their final preps, and both stakes should be very revealing.