Paddy acts on multiple surfaces; how many others could?

Continuing the theme of my last post about training and playing on multiple surfaces, I’ve included two videos below of my son John Fernando, a shortstop, on both surfaces. [Yes, he's applying to colleges and I might as well give him as much exposure as possible, I figure! He now runs the 60 in 7:00 flat and [...]

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Practice on artificial surfaces makes sense before the playing

Young ball players and racehorses are continually schooled in the mechanics of proper movement, from double-play feeds to changing leads correctly. Many of this early schooling took place in the “old days” on natural fields, but artificial surfaces have changed the way some are now taught. Indeed, many young ball players and horses now get [...]

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Baseball analogy: Explaining elements of synthetic racing

The post before this one, Jessica Chapel addresses DRF’s clear anti-synthetic stance, engendered a number of comments from some well known racing people, including Steven Crist of Daily Racing Form, Ray Paulick of Paulick Report, Barry Irwin of Team Valor, and Alan Porter, the pedigree pundit, primarily relating to the perceived role of the daily paper’s editorial slant against synthetic [...]

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Jessica Chapel addresses DRF’s clear anti-synthetic stance

Jessica Chapel, as far as I’m concerned, is an innovator (she developed the Raceday360 site, recently sold to Hello Race Fans) and forward thinker, and over the last two years we’ve had opportunities to occasionally chat online and exchange thoughts. She was one of the first in the racing industry to embrace Twitter (as I [...]

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Roger Lyons crunches figs and spits out Top 40 dam lines

Roger Lyons long ago worked side-by-side with Bill Oppenheim at Racing Update, in the development of Bill’s “APEX” ratings. He also worked with the late Jack Werk on the development of the Werk Nick Rating for WTC, Inc., of which I’m president. At WTC, Roger has developed several tools for pedigree analysis, and he’s always fritzing around [...]

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Bill Oppenheim’s Top 12 points to shift in balance of power

Bill Oppenheim’s column today in TDN lists the sires he considers to be the 12 best in the world (or perhaps NH) and more than half stand abroad. This opinion is shared by many, though the exact horses listed by Bill might change here or there. The dozen according to Bill are: A.P. Indy (1989) [...]

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Classic distance and turf horses leading sprinters on the list

Have you taken a close look at the Thoroughbred Times 2010 Freshman Sire List? As of today, it’s topsy-turvy, but pleasantly so and you’ll see what I mean by this. I and others have been lamenting for a while now that the racing and breeding programs in this country have reached a point where speed has [...]

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A.P. Indy’s Congrats leads freshman sire list and may move

Congrats, through today, is still the leading freshman sire in the country, ahead of Bluegrass Cat in second and Bernardini in third. Click here to see the Thoroughbred Times 2010 Freshman Sire List, ranked by progeny earnings. Not bad at all for a stallion that stood for $4,500 his fourth year at stud this season, compared [...]

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WinStar’s sire-making abilities continue with Bluegrass Cat

WinStar is the lone US farm in 2010 that has come closest to emulating the terrific season that Juddmonte is enjoying this year on track and in the breeding shed.  Juddmonte’s Workforce’s won the Epsom Derby and Arc, Frankel is the best 2-year-old in Europe, and Proviso has claims on an Eclipse as best turf female, to name three racing [...]

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Women in the trenches of the game face sexual harassment

The headline is startling and attention grabbing, but anyone on the backside of a racetrack or deep within the infrastructure of the breeding business knows that frequently women are subjected to treatment by men—including violence—that they wouldn’t face as blatantly on the “front side” of the game. I know of a woman on a California stud [...]

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Air and breathing: Notes from Becker at Elevage Y Turf blog

Fernando Martinez, who writes the Spanish-language Elevage Y Turf blog, has reproduced an interesting article in English by Freidrich Becker on air and breathing—a subject that I’ve addressed through equipment and find extraordinarily interesting. Fernando was kind enough to email it to me, to publicize to a larger audience.  Here’s an excerpt: A horse does not breathe continuously [...]

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More Joyous is More Than Ready’s able queen Down Under

More Joyous, a New Zealand-bred 4-year-old filly by US-based More Than Ready, won the 1600-meter Group 1 David Jones Toorak Handicap at Caulfield Oct. 9 for her 10th win in 13 starts, the last eight consecutively. The Gai Waterhouse-trained filly won the prestigious handicap under top weight of 58 kgs or about 128 lbs. from colts—something that would [...]

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Seattle Slew + Secretariat=A.P. Indy, the sire of Bernardini

A.P. Indy is a son of 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew out of a distinguished daughter of 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat. Before A.P. Indy, Weekend Surprise produced Preakness winner Summer Squall in 1987. She foaled A.P. Indy in 1989, and in 1990, the year his half-brother by Storm Bird became a classic winner in [...]

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Frankel, Dream Ahead, Saamidd share pedigree elements

The Group 1 Dewhurst Saturday at Newmarket over 7 furlongs is a dress rehearsal for the 2000 Guineas next year and bills as possible headliners the three high-profile juveniles in Britain to date, Frankel, Dream Ahead, and Saamidd, each undefeated, lightly raced, and indebted to the breeding programs of Juddmonte, Coolmore, and Darley. And notable is that Coolmore’s iconic sire Sadler’s Wells appears in the [...]

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Saturday at Belmont notable for races and a big “tweetup”

Twitter is playing its part in galvanizing fans from around the country to talk the talk and walk the talk; specifically, this weekend saw a group of “tweeps”—Team Blame, as they’ve come to be known, with their custom-made Blame t-shirts—gather from around the country at Belmont to cheer on their Horse of the Year contender in the [...]

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