Category: Equine

Derby Disqualification

Equine 12 Comments

Demolition Derby: “We’d have let him keep his well-earned win, despite our notorious partiality to long shots.”

When all was said and done, the article makes the right point: Country House was unimpeded and had every chance to win, but didn’t.

But perspective matters. The unsung hero of the debacle was War of Will, who miraculously avoided the legs of Maximum Security as he crossed in front of him. We could have been talking about multiple racetrack fatalities today, instead of a controversy in the stewards room.

You can watch the race again here, if you missed it yesterday.

Update: A different angle on the incident, and I’ve changed my mind. I think the stewards did the right thing here.

Justify

Equine 16 Comments

@andyserling — “Justify did something remarkable in winning six races in 111 days, five of them going two turns. This is something you likely won’t ever see again. We can discuss where he fits from an historical perspective at another time. For now it’s just congratulation on an amazing feat”.

“A Beast From Day One”

Equine 3 Comments

Bloodhorse;

So where did this powerhouse of a racehorse with the overwhelming physical presence come from? Three years earlier he was romping about the fields of John D. Gunther’s Glennwood Farm outside Versailles, Kentucky alongside another colt, later to be named Vino Rosso. Gunther and his daughter Tanya, who plans all the matings, couldn’t believe it when Justify won the Santa Anita Derby and Vino Rosso won the Wood Memorial an hour and a half apart.

 

John, who is from Canada, goes to Kentucky six or seven times a year and stays for a week to 10 days, leaving Tanya to “micromanage” the farm.

April 15, 2018: Reader Tips

Equine Reader Tips 27 Comments

In the late afternoon of Monday, Oct. 2, 1989, as I headed my car from the driveway of Arthur Hancock’s Stone Farm onto Winchester Road outside Paris, Ky., I was seized by an impulse as beckoning as the wind that strums through the trees down there, mingling the scents of new grass and old history.

 

For reasons as obscure to me then as now, I felt compelled to see Lawrence Robinson. For almost 30 years, until he suffered a stroke in March 1983, Robinson was the head caretaker of stallions at Claiborne Farm. I had not seen him since his illness, but I knew he still lived on the farm, in a small white frame house set on a hill overlooking the lush stallion paddocks and the main stallion barn. In the first stall of that barn, in the same place that was once home to the great Bold Ruler, lived Secretariat, Bold Ruler’s greatest son.

From Pure Heart, , by sports writing legend Bill Nack — dead at 77.

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