It's not often that the best of the Triple Crown races is the last one but that's how it is this year with 155th running of the Belmont Stakes on Saturday. It has arguably the best 3-year-old in Forte, the winner of the Preakness Stakes in National Treasure and eight other horses who should be fresh enough to handle the always tricky 1½-mile ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — As they made their way to Kentucky, Jack and Lynn Nankivil considered how to create a good first impression. They were looking to make a purchase that could change their lives, one that would bring royal equine blood to their Appaloosa breeding farm near Winona, Minn.

The great Secretariat — who swept the 1973 Triple Crown in ...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Churchill Downs is moving the remainder of its current horse racing meet to Ellis Park in Henderson, the track announced Friday.

Live racing will continue Saturday and Sunday at Churchill. Track operations will be suspended on June 7 and resume June 10 at Ellis Park, according to the track.

The news comes in the wake of 12 ...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Churchill Downs is moving the remainder of its current horse racing meet to Ellis Park in Henderson, according to multiple media reports on Friday.

The news comes in the wake of 12 equine fatalities suffered during the Louisville racetrack’s spring meet, as well as a veterinary summit and track testing by the Horseracing ...Read more

In the wake of the recent 12 equine fatalities during the spring meet at Churchill Downs, the Louisville track announced new safety initiatives and precautionary measures Thursday.

Many of the measures deal with restrictions for horses that have previously performed poorly.

According to a press release, the track held a Thursday morning ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Kentucky considers itself the cradle of horse racing in the United States. It has the most important race and the largest breeding facilities but is dealing with an unwelcome crisis — the deaths of racing thoroughbreds. So, where does it look for advice? California.

Jamie Eads, the newly appointed executive director of the ...Read more

First came the greetings. Last week, when Dr. Christy Klatt saw Hot Shot Kid in the stables at Canterbury Park, she gave the chestnut gelding a big hug to welcome him back to the Shakopee track.

This wasn't strictly a social call, though. This was about preventing the kinds of catastrophic injuries that have roiled horse racing in recent months...Read more

Bob Baffert is officially back. On the track back. Triple Crown-race back. Like it or not, back. For better or worse, horse racing’s most recognizable and controversial trainer is officially back in the spotlight of the winner’s circle.

Whether that’s a good thing for horse racing is clearly up for debate.

Saturday at Pimlico Race Course...Read more

Of course a Bob Baffert-trained horse won the Preakness Stakes.

Thoroughbred racing exists in a perpetual gray zone between tragedy and uplift. So what result could make more sense than a Baffert horse winning a captivating Triple Crown race on the same track where a stablemate broke down, fatally, five hours earlier?

The juxtaposition of ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Bob Baffert’s voice cracked as he tried to make sense of a tragic, triumphant Saturday at Pimlico Race Course.

The Hall of Fame trainer had watched his horse, Havnameltdown, suffer a catastrophic ankle injury in the sixth race on the Preakness Stakes undercard, tossing rider Luis Saez to the dirt and sending him to the hospital ...Read more

BALTIMORE — On a day marred by a death in his barn, trainer Bob Baffert made a triumphant return to the Preakness Stakes, winning his record-breaking eighth with National Treasure.

Baffert missed last year’s Triple Crown series because he was suspended for a medication violation that disqualified Medina Spirit from his 2021 victory in the ...Read more

BALTIMORE — The day wasn’t even half over when tragedy struck on Preakness Day at Pimlico Race Course on Saturday.

Hours before the second leg of the Triple Crown, Bob Baffert-trained horse and favorite Havnameltdown was euthanized after suffering a catastrophic injury to its front left ankle on the stretch turn of the day’s sixth race. ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Randy Morse liked what he saw last November when he used $50,000 of his client Richard Bahde’s money to claim a filly named Taxed.

She proceeded not to win any of her next four races.

That changed in a big way Friday when Taxed surged past a field packed with more accomplished fillies to win the 99th running of the George E. ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Bob Baffert was back in his element, standing outside the stakes barn, talking with friends, talking to owners, talking to reporters.

He held his first media scrum at about 7:15 a.m. Friday.

"I'm like [Gustavo] Delgado, I don't speak English," he said with a laugh, referring to the trainer of Kentucky Derby winner Mage, who isn't...Read more

BALTIMORE — As a gaggle of reporters surrounded Bob Baffert to hear what the Hall of Fame trainer had to say after a year away from the Triple Crown series, John Salzman Jr. went about his business in the background.

Anyone who has followed thoroughbred racing over the past three decades knows Baffert, the white-haired maestro who’s won the...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Considered the top challenger to Kentucky Derby winner Mage, First Mission was scratched from the Preakness after consultation with the Pimlico veterinary team on Friday morning.

According to a press release from Godolphin, the winner of the Lexington Stakes was scratched because of a problem with his left hind foot. First ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Ramiro Restrepo prayed the bidding would not jump to $300,000.

He was already past his budget, but he and Gustavo Delgado Jr. so liked what they had seen from this 2-year-old colt — the ease of his movement and the pep that remained in his step after a hard workout.

Restrepo could not glimpse the competing bidder, hidden behind...Read more

BALTIMORE — When Secretariat won the Preakness on the way to his Triple Crown, the news appeared alongside stories about Watergate on The Baltimore Sun’s May 20, 1973, front page. In the half-century since, no horse has finished the 1 3/16-mile track at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore faster than his 1 minute, 53 seconds. Decades of debate ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Kevin Liles first attended Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown series, as a teenager with his father in the 1980s. But it was years down the line before he fully understood what was happening at the Pimlico Race Course.

“You cut me open, I bleed Baltimore. So I knew about Preakness since I was a little kid,” Liles ...Read more