LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Epicenter, no worse than second choice for the Kentucky Derby, galloped one mile just after the Churchill Downs track opened for training on a rainy Tuesday morning. The Louisiana Derby winner came out of a five-furlong workout Sunday in good shape and after tack-walking on Monday quickly returned to galloping, a good sign for his Derby chances.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The stakes riches on a marathon Kentucky Derby Day Saturday at Churchill Downs kick off with the Grade 2, $500,000 Churchill Distaff Turf Mile.

The race has been slotted as the fifth of 14 on a card that kicks off at 10:30 a.m. It is the first of seven undercard stakes that precede the Kentucky Derby, which will go off shortly before 7 p.m.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Golden Pal, winner of Breeders' Cup races in 2020 and 2021, is the undisputed leader of the North American turf sprint ranks. Five horses who chased him home last time out are part of a field of 13 entered for the Grade 2, $500,000 Twin Spires Turf Sprint on Friday at Churchill Downs.

The Twin Spires is slotted as the race immediately preceding the Kentucky Oaks, as race 10 of 13.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- When Brian Hernandez Jr. won the first race held over the new Churchill turf course Saturday night with a 3-year-old colt named Stitched, he completed an extraordinary double.

“I also won the last race run over the old course,” said Hernandez, referring to a victory aboard Navratilova in the Tepin Stakes on June 26, 2021, the final day of racing here last spring. “Pretty neat.”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Zandon drew post 10 and was made the 3-1 morning-line favorite, and Epicenter landed post 3 and was installed the second choice at 7-2, as a full field of 20, plus two also-eligibles, had posts assigned Monday afternoon at Churchill Downs for the 148th Kentucky Derby on Saturday.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Yes, that striking gray horse you saw galloping around the Churchill Downs dirt oval this week was turf star Colonel Liam. 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Likely, no one is going to feel especially sorry for Brad Cox this week. On Monday, Cox entered three horses – Cyberknife, Zozos, and Tawny Port – in the Kentucky Derby, and his stable is loaded with stakes-quality horses. One of those is the 3-year-old filly Juju’s Map, set to make her 2022 debut Friday in a second-level two-turn allowance race against older horses.  

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – When the colt Justify came to the Kentucky Derby in 2018, one might have mistaken the racing pages for tales of classical mythology or reports on the late-60s space program.

“Apollo.” You couldn’t walk down the hall for a drink of water without hearing that name. It was 1882 when a colt named Apollo won the Kentucky Derby, and 136 years later he still was the only Derby winner who hadn’t raced as a 2-year-old.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Sunday morning on the backstretch at Santa Anita, jockey Brice Blanc ran into jockey and exercise rider Sophia Barandela, who asked how his weekend was going.

“I was in San Francisco yesterday and I ride a couple today,” Blanc said.

Blanc is plain guilty of underselling his weekend.

Saturday at Golden Gate Fields, Blanc won that track’s richest race aboard Evening Sun in the Grade 3 San Francisco Mile, a $254,050 race on turf.

GEORGETOWN, Ky. – The paved road on which visitors make their entrance bisects paddocks that this time of year – having been fed by rain in preceding months – are a shade of green that make your eyes hurt. Inside those prominent paddocks are horses who won major stakes and millions of dollars. There are many horses like that here at Old Friends Farm, many too who weren’t famous at all.