TORONTO, Ontario - Twenty-two Thoroughbreds died Friday in a fire that destroyed a barn at Woodlands, a farm and training center in Hillsburgh, Ontario.
Gail Wood, a consignor and breeder who is the proprietor of Woodlands, said an emergency call was placed at 6:11 p.m. Friday, and that while the fire department responded promptly, flames had engulfed the building by 6:30 p.m.
Four horses were rescued from the blaze.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - A chance meeting in Nebraska 25 years ago brought Bill Casner and Ken Troutt together. Each had placed a claim on Great Bear Lake at the old Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack, and Casner, then a 25-year-old claiming trainer, won the two-way shake.
Neither man could have known at the time that those few minutes over the claim box would change their lives forever. Over the next 25 years, their association would make them enormously wealthy and eventually put their names in the history books as breeders of 2003 Kentucky Derby winner, Funny Cide.
OCALA, Fla. - P.A. "Tony" Everard, who bought Funny Cide as a yearling, is the second Florida-based pinhooker in three years to snare a Kentucky Derby winner. Two years ago, Monarchos, pinhooked by Murray Smith, won the Derby.
Everard bought two yearlings at the 2001 Saratoga sale of New York-breds - Funny Cide and one by Eastern Echo - and sent them to the New Episode Training Center in Ocala, Fla., owned by Everard and his wife, Elisabeth.
New York was not the only state to challenge tradition with a classic winner on the first weekend in May. The Pennsylvania-bred filly Russian Rhythm upset a heavy favorite and 18 other rivals to win England's Group 1 1000 Guineas on May 4, the day after Funny Cide's Kentucky Derby triumph.
Not surprisingly, the phones have been ringing nonstop at the offices of the New York Thoroughbred Breeders in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the city where this year's Kentucky Derby winner, Funny Cide, was born.
Last Saturday at Churchill Downs, Funny Cide became the first New York-bred to win the Kentucky Derby in the race's 129-year history. The Distorted Humor gelding was born at Joe and Anne McMahon's McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds on Fitch Road, about a mile from Saratoga Race Course.
There were two distinctively different previews last week for the Barretts May sale of 2-year-olds in training, which will be held Monday and Tuesday.
The conventional preview was held on Thursday and Friday at Fairplex Park on the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, featuring sale prospects breezing a furlong or a quarter-mile.
Across town at Hollywood Park, another preview of sorts was held on Wednesday and Thursday, when a few of the prospects ran in maiden races over 4 1/2 furlongs.
Owner Daniel Borislow said Thursday that he is close to a deal that would send his Grade 1 winner Toccet to Lane's End Farm at the end of his racing career.
Toccet is turned out at a farm near Lexington, Ky., for what Borislow said would be about 45 days of rest. A 3-year-old Awesome Again colt, Toccet was pulled off the Triple Crown trail because of what Borislow then termed bone remodeling, the bone-growth process that young horses go through in response to the stresses of training and racing. Borislow said Toccet will return to training this year and will race for him.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - So, how does a sprinter sire the winner of the Kentucky Derby? If you believe some of the commentary about the bloodlines of the horses in the Derby, a gelding like Funny Cide had no chance whatsoever because he descends from the Mr. Prospector line through champion 2-year-old Forty Niner, and his sire was best at less than a mile.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - When Funny Cide won the Kentucky Derby on May 3, Marylander Kennard Warfield Jr. got an especially big charge out of it. Warfield hadn't bet a dime on the Derby winner, but he owns the sole sister to Funny Cide, and that means he has a newly valuable property.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - A fire Tuesday evening in Ocala, Fla., killed five stallions, including Grade 1 winner Traitor and popular Florida sire Darn That Alarm. The fire, the cause of which hadn't been determined by Wednesday afternoon, occurred in the stallion barn at David and Barbara LaCroix's Meadowbrook of Ocala Jockey Club farm in Ocala.
