horseracing Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Please Enjoy The Last Footage Ever Taken Of Secretariat
Because it's Derby weekend, and because awesome things don't need a news peg, we wanted to share this gem with you: the last days of the world's greatest racehorse. ...

Hunter S. Thompson's Kentucky Derby Classic Makes An Awesome Poster
The Kentucky Derby is this Saturday, so it's about time for an annual re-read of Hunter S. Thompson's "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved." And to go with it, this wonderful print, portraying characters, locations, and even nebulous concepts, all as jockey silks. Do want....

The Most Successful Stud Horse Of All Time Has Died
Storm Cat won $570,000 in his racing career, which lasted from 1985-1987. But in his second life, he was the most prolific and successful stud horse in the history of racing, at one point bringing in $500,000 per foal....

The Heart of the Matter
Over at The Neiman Storyboard, Don Van Natta Jr. explains why Bill Nack's beautiful story, "Pure Gold" is so damn good. ...

Horse Escapes Racetrack, Runs Down Highway For A Couple Miles
This morning, at Laurel Park in Maryland, Bullet Catcher made a break for it. The four-year-old gelding was returning to his stable after a workout when he decided he was fed up with the whole thing. He threw his jockey, somehow got past the stable gate, and took off....

"Here Comes Rudolph On The Outside": Three Deer Wander Onto Racetrack, Run A Couple Laps
The action had to be halted at Meadows Racetrack in western Pennsylvania last Wednesday, as three lost deer somehow found their way onto the track. They poked around the final turn before bolting the wrong way around the track. Then, on the backstretch, they stopped and turned around. It went like...

Jockey Chantal Sutherland Failed A Breathalyzer Test Before Her Race
Chantal Sutherland is not unattractive. But the Canadian rider, with more than 10 years of experience, has headed off any Danica-style criticism by actually being quite good at her job. Thankfully for her, that body of work will also prevent her from being known chiefly as the jockey who nearly rode...

Everybody Lost Two Different Horses Won The Travers Stakes
There was an actual tie yesterday at the Travers Stakes. Golden Ticket and Alpha finished in a dead heat, so nobody won. Or they both won? One of the jockeys said after the race, "Neither one of us knew if we won," and, while technically they both "won"—there were two separate first-place trophy pre...

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...

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 ...

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....