Three-year-old filly Princess Lili B broke down during a half-mile workout at Santa Anita Thursday, becoming the 22nd horse to die in racing or training since the meet began Dec. 26. Princess Lili B was in training for her third career start, after finishing ninth in her debut Dec. 29 in a $50,000 maiden claiming […]

Days after he declared the Santa Anita main track “100 percent ready” for racing and training and subsequently two more horses died, racing surfaces consultant Mick Peterson stands by his examination but also believes Santa Anita shutting down the track indefinitely was the right thing to do. “There was no other option at this point, […]

Our quest for Breeders’ Cup longshots started out pretty well on Future Stars Friday. In the five races, two winners popped from 10-1 morning lines to win (Bulletin and Line of Duty), and in the Juvenile Fillies, Vibrance was ignored at the windows, climbing from 10-1 to 35-1 to ignite a $387 trifecta by hitting […]

Like most handicappers with a pulse, I look forward to the two-day Breeders’ Cup World Championships for one reason — the opportunity to bet on horses whose odds in no way reflect their actual chances of winning. In other words, bombs away! With that in mind, here are a few that strike my fancy on […]

As I approached Giles Anderson’s booth at Equestricon this week, he pulled up the Racing Post on his mobile device, sliding it in front of me to display a photo on the front page of the website. It was of stallion Arrogate, bucking in the air at Kentucky’s Juddmonte Farms. “See,” he said. “An American […]

So far in our series on speed figures, we’ve seen how numbers get adjusted using the Beyer method, how pace is incorporated into TimeformUS ratings and how so-called “designer” figure makers like Thoro-Graph and The Sheets take into account factors such as ground loss and wind speed. In our final installment, we’re looking at two […]

In the first two parts of our series on speed figures, we’ve seen two contrasting approaches for analyzing how fast racehorses run — Beyer Speed Figures and TimeformUS. Now for something completely different. By its own description, Thoro-Graph isn’t even a speed figure. It’s a performance figure. While the company uses some conventional speed figure […]

One thing that will be clear at the end of our series this week on speed figures is that no two numbers are the same. Each of the figure makers we’re exploring takes a different approach to rating race performance, and understanding the differences between them is critical to getting the best use out of […]

The creation of speed figures to handicap horse races dates back further than you might think. Horseplayer tomes published in the mid-1930’s suggested people were boiling down race performances to one number, teaching others how to do it and selling their ready-made figures. Today, a number of companies offer speed or performance figures to the […]

It’s a big weekend of high-class turf racing north of the border and overseas, with eight of those races being “Win and You’re In” for the Breeders’ Cup. Plus ready or not, it’s time once again to jump on the Road to the Kentucky Derby and Oaks, as Churchill Downs hosts the Iroquois and Pocahontas […]