horse Page 12 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The First-Ever Horse Race Called By An Announcer On Helium
It was "Extreme Race Day" at Minnesota's Canterbury Park, a designation that seems to mean different things from year to year. This time around, it meant ostrich races, camel races, and in the ninth, track announcer Paul Allen taking hits of helium throughout....

Saratoga Opens With Three Dead Horses On The First Day
The Summer Meet doesn't officially begin until tomorrow—Sunday was just the Open House, "a free family event that unofficially opens the track each year." Hopefully the families enjoyed the steeplechase events, in which three horses broke down in the first three races. All were euthanized. [Times Un...

Ann Romney's Horse Hangs Out With Assholes
So, part of my job as a Deadspin intern has involved writing some those fun Olympic field guides that you may have seen on the site recently. Today I started writing one about Ann Romney's dressage horse, Rafalca, who will be competing in the London Olympics. I wanted to get a nice photo of Rafalca...

Whoa, We're Halfway There: The Grierson & Leitch Top 12 Movies Of The First Half of 2012
Shockingly, we are more than halfway through 2012. (It's a backloaded year: Olympics, election, total global catastrophe—all stacked up from late July on.) As always, the best, most "prestigious" movies won't be released until November or December, because the people who vote on the Oscars are senil...

Our Race Horses Are Broken, America
Our horses are sick. Our thoroughbreds are thoroughly inbred. They are locomotives sitting atop toothpicks. They are fragile and friable, designed to run but not to recover from running. And each time they break down or wear out, we chalk it up to an individual horse's shortcomings, rather than the ...

Olympics Field Guide: Hiroshi Hoketsu, The 71-Year-Old Olympian
Name: Hiroshi Hoketsu...

Race Horses Now Doping By Licking Frogs
There's some weird counter-intuition at play when it's argued that thoroughbred racing has its doping problem under control because there are so many positive tests. But with so much money at stake—much more than in some small-change sport like baseball—there's a secret arms race between the good sc...

Secretariat Just Set The Preakness Stakes Record
This is Secretariat's 1973 Preakness Stakes, somehow the least dominant of his Triple Crown races. He finished, officially, in 1:54 2/5, despite the fact that not a single timer had him clocked at that time. Now, 39 years later, the long-dead massive-hearted horse shaved more than a second off his...

Police Shut Down Illegal Horse Racing Track On Side Of Arizona Highway
Pantoji, a little dirt track by the highway 60 miles south of Phoenix, has been holding two- and three-horse races for years, with admission at $10 a head. It wasn't licensed, it wasn't monitored, and it violated just about every gambling statute on the books. And now it's closed, after authoritie...

Mexican Drug Lords Launder Money Through Horse Racing, U.S. Government Alleges
There's a lot that's terribly shadowy and evil about the sport of horse racing, from the dead horses on set at HBO's Luck to the dead horses at the Aqueduct to the dead horses really anywhere horses race....

Here Is A Seething Bob Costas Trying To Conduct A Post-Race Interview At The Belmont Stakes
Who won the Belmont Stakes? Who knows, it's not important. We're not degenerate gamblers, are we? This is fun, though. As Bob Neumeier attempted to kick it over to Bob Costas who was with Steve Duncker, chairman of NYRA, there was some confusion on Costas's end....

I'll Have Another Scratched From Belmont Stakes
There will be no Triple Crown this year, either. Doug O'Neill, the trainer for I'll Have Another, just went on The Dan Patrick Show and declared the horse is "officially out" of tomorrow's Belmont Stakes because of a "little problem with his left front leg." O'Neill also thinks I'll Have Another wi...

I'll Have Another Barely Escapes Assassin Horse (Shadowy Steinbrenner Cabal Update!)
At Belmont Park today, a still-unidentified horse took a gallop at I'll Have Another, just nine days before he makes his run at the Triple Crown. The mysterious horse, possible awoken from a Manchurian Candidate trance by a secret word ("oats"), threw her rider and ran down the track, directly at I'...

Doug O'Neill, Trainer Of I'll Have Another, Will Be Suspended For Non-I'll Have Another Infraction
The California Racing Board has upheld a punishment of Doug O'Neill, trainer for Triple Crown hopeful I'll Have Another, in connection with an incident in a race nearly two years ago. In that case, Argenta, a horse trained by O'Neill, showed an overly high level of carbon dioxide in its blood. That'...

I'll Have Another's Trainer Talks Strategy With His Horse, But Quietly, So Other Horses Don't Overhear
Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: Doug O'Neill and I'll Have Another have some secrets heading to Belmont....

I'll Have Another Wins Preakness, Forcing All Of Us To Watch The Belmont Stakes In Three Weeks
I'll Have Another nosed out a Preakness Stakes victory over Bodemeister with a late surge, ruining plans of a million Americans who'd scheduled something other than watching horse racing on June 9th. ...

Kegasus, The Beer-Loving Mascot Of The Beer-Loving Preakness, Is Actually A Sober Phony
What's the saying? If you'll keg stand for something, you'll fall for anything? Promoters of the Preakness Stakes must believe it. Turns out that Kegasus, spokesbeast for the Preakness and the best mascot in all of sports, is a sham....

Accomplished Female Jockey Photographed Naked Atop A Horse, Of Course
Chantal Sutherland is one of the most accomplished jockeys in modern-day horse racing. She's won more than 900 races, including dozens of major stakes races. She appeared in several episodes of HBO's horse racing-centric drama Luck, and in March became the first woman to ride in the $10 million Duba...

Police Identify Kentucky Derby Murder Victim, Believe He Was Killed After "Altercation"
Louisville police briefed the media this morning on the shocking news that a horse groom was murdered at Churchill Downs following the Kentucky Derby. Lt. Barry Wilkerson of the Louisville Metro Police Department just wrapped up a 20-minute press conference and gave a clearer picture of what went do...