Maryland based-trainer Phil Schoenthal used to become upset when things did not go his way in a sport filled with adversity. Not anymore. He remains passionate about winning and the attention to detail that requires, but his perspective radically changed when his son Emerson, then 3 years old, was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy last spring. […]

No competition in the United States compares to Belmont Park’s spring-summer meet in its history-making potential. This year’s 48-day meet offers 59 stakes worth $18.4 million and the hope that maybe, just maybe, a Triple Crown champion will be crowned for the third time in five years after the coronation of American Pharoah in 2015 […]

Trainer Todd Pletcher said he has scrutinized every facet of an operation that produced a record seven Eclipse Awards in a remarkable stretch from 2004-’14 but recently showed evidence of decline. A dazzling spring last year in which Noble Indy won the Louisiana Derby, Audible the Florida Derby, Vino Rosso the Wood Memorial and Magnum […]

While Jude Pastor was installing a rock garden on a broiling July afternoon in Louisiana, he could not wait to enjoy a cold soda. When he finally allowed himself a break, he drank deeply, expecting to almost instantly feel refreshed and restored. Instead, he was jolted by pain he never experienced before. “Wow, that hurt,” […]

Mothers know their children – the good, the bad, and the awful – so Fern Augusti knew the call would come one day. Brian, the oldest of her five children, had been resuscitated once before after overdosing on heroin only to plunge again into those depths of despair. When the call came in July 2009 […]

Noted orthopaedic trauma surgeon Philip Kregor was blunt when he met with jockey Kendrick Carmouche and his wife, Whitney, following a horrific accident at Kentucky Downs last Sept. 8. According to Whitney, he told them Carmouche’s broken right femur was one of the two worst he had ever seen and compared the damage to what […]

Lorna Vincent wanted to die. She had experienced a steeplechase jockey’s worst nightmare in 1986 in her native England. Her mount failed to clear a jump and somersaulted in mid-air, planting the rider into the turf head-first. Vincent immediately lost all sensation from the neck down. Even as doctors and nurses tended to her at […]

When Raymond Lyle approached William H. “Jinks” Fires about working for him as a hotwalker at Churchill Downs in 1988, the trainer hired him while assuming their business relationship would be short-lived the way so many backstretch associations are. He did not know Lyle. Lyle had just kept a pledge to his mother, Frances, by […]

As John Velazquez pondered his riding career through the years, he kept two things in mind. He might retire soon after he turned 45; he would surely not ride past 47. Things change. As Velazquez nears his 47th birthday on Nov. 24, there is no hint that a Hall of Fame career that made him the runaway […]

There are times when Niccolo Troiani and his girlfriend, Danni Griggs, feel as though they are foreigners in their native land as they work for accomplished trainer Robertino Diodoro. They have looked after horses at Turf Paradise, Oaklawn Park, Keeneland, Churchill Downs, Saratoga Race Course and Delta Downs – their current home – in the […]