Mystic Lake Derby Day Nears
Go ahead and pick up the champagne, dig out the attire you wore last year for the race, careful to assure everything is the same, not a single accoutrement out-of-place, cross your fingers and don’t say anything that might be construed as a jinx. “My dad’s superstitious,” said Lori Keith. “It will have to be […]
2013 Derby Day Nears
Occasionally she’ll think about the race and the biggest win of her career, the stuff of warm feelings and pleasant thoughts, except for that interminable wait. “It was intense, wasn’t it though,” says Lori Keith. The subject at hand, of course, is the inaugural Mystic Lake Derby first held in 2012 and Keith’s controversial win […]
Nebraskans Reunite in MN
Centura High School is located in rural central Nebraska on the banks of the Loup River and draws its students from Boleus, Dannebrog and Cairo, where it is located. A recent count put the enrollment for grades 7 through 12 at 250 students, so it is not a large school by any means. So, what […]
What’s on Tap for July 3rd
Canterbury’s July 3rd card may be the best of the season to date. The eleven races are comprised of three stakes and 107 entries (3 of which are on the also-eligible list) including two state-bred turf stakes, the $50k Blairs Cove and the $50k Princess Elaine. In the Blairs Cove, a one mile and one […]
Streak Begins? (Heliskier Update)
Trainer Bernell Rhone was asked about a horse he handled last year named Gold Brew, the first horse in his career to win six consecutive races. “I’ve stopped some winning streaks,” Rhone quipped Saturday afternoon, “but, yes, that was the first horse to win that many in a row for me.” Gold Brew was back […]
14,455 Enjoy Father’s Day Card
There is nothing like horse racing for destroying a person’s spirit one instant and then restoring it a few minutes later. These are the vicissitudes of a sport that can present more ups and downs, more highs and lows, than the Wild thing at Valley Fair. You can be a dejected loser one moment and an […]
Brooks Fields Stakes on Tap
When you walk into Churchill Downs the history of its most famous race is displayed along the upper reaches of the grandstand outside the paddock, one Kentucky Derby winner after another, starting with Aristides in 1875. Thoroughbred racing is empty without its history, without the stories of its great horses, sires and broodmares, jockeys, trainers […]
Retired Racehorse Makeover
It’s a moniker, a handle, an appellation, a diminutive or, just plain and simple, a name. Yet, the process by which a racehorse acquires his or hers is sometimes complex, convoluted and misunderstood. Often, the horse’s dam or sire is taken into consideration, and just as often a process never before applied results in the given […]
Cannonball Blows ‘Em Away
There was John Bullit, a horse enshrined in Canterbury Park’s Hall of Fame. There is the silver bullet, a shell capable of repelling a serious vampire threat, and there is the Human Bullet, aka David Smith, Jr., who soared 165 feet through the mist and premature gloaming Monday afternoon and into a net 20 feet […]
Heliskier Unbeaten Streak Hits 7
The sheen in his brown coat accents his muscular frame, and he stands out immediately from other horses around him. The unbeaten son of Appealing Skier truly is something to behold. There is not another horse on the grounds in this four-year-old gelding’s class. He is a man among boys, a giant among Lilliputians, a horse […]