churchill-downs - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Horse racing needs a stoppage, not a change of sceneryOne of the rebuttals to Churchill Downs’ suspension of horse racing after this weekend was that officials couldn’t find proof of the venue’s role in the dozen horses who’ve died there this year. While that logic comes off like an amusement park owner saying “Nothing to see here” as kids get launched...

A fix for horse racing that’s more than an ‘emergency meeting’Horse racing regulatory and safety officials, along with representatives from Churchill Downs, are holding an emergency meeting today in response to two more horse deaths at the famed track in Louisville, Ky. this spring. The reason I’m writing this before the actual meet-and-greet is that nothing i...

Is horse racing worth saving?The discussion of the future of horse racing seems to be popping up more regularly these days. The greater regularity of the topic probably started in 2019, when Santa Anita Park in Southern California had an unprecedented rash of horses suffering fatal injuries, with 42 horses dying and shutting do...

Quick, what hat says, ‘I’m fun but also grieving 7 dead horses’?

Here at Deadspin, we take a wait-and-see approach to covering horse racing. Every year, someone will pitch a Kentucky Derby preview and either get laughed out of the writer’s room or ignored. The only reason we wrote about the 2022 iteration was because long shot Rich Strike won at 80-1, and his tra...

80-1 shot Rich Strike wins Kentucky Derby

Rich Strike wasn’t in the Kentucky Derby field when head trainer Eric Reid woke up Friday morning. After a late scratch to Ethereal Road, a spot opened up for a 21st horse in the 20-thoroughbred field. And one of the longest shots in the field at 80-1 at post time just won the 148th Kentucky Derby....

IDIOT OF THE YEAR 2021: Cole Beasley, Enes Kanter, Ron DeSantis, and more doofs

Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.”...

Bob Baffert’s attorney gets eviscerated on CNN

After Kentucky Derby winner* Medina Spirit failed his first drug test, his trainer, Bob Baffert, did the media rounds to blame cancel culture and everybody besides himself for his horse’s unusually high levels of betamethasone....

Bob Baffert inexplicably blames ‘cancel culture’ for horse-doping controversy

Trainer Bob Baffert’s horse, Medina Spirit, who won the Kentucky Derby on May 1, tested positive for a banned substance. Apparently, according to Baffert, this happened because one of the groomers decided to take a piss on the hay in the horse’s stall after taking cough medicine, and the horse consu...