Chris McGrath

4 days ago | thoroughbreddailynews.com | Chris McGrath

However poignant the cue, our collective reflections on the legacy of D. Wayne Lukas will discover much comfort not only in his vital embrace of every moment of a long, fulfilling life but also in the benedictions we can take forward with us. These range from the example he has set us all, in passionate advocacy of our sport, to the more specific conduits of horsemanship he opened in “coaching” Todd Pletcher and so many others.

1 week ago | thoroughbreddailynews.com | Chris McGrath

Feel free to make plans, working with Thoroughbreds–just don't be deceived that it'll ever be you who decides how far they work out. With a young son to raise, Becky Maker had quit the rootless life of a trainer and taken a role on the pre-training team at WinStar. “Just to stay in one place, have a salary and be safe,” she remembers wryly. “Within six months I had a horse rear up and flip over in the shedrow. Severe fracture of the femur.

1 week ago | thoroughbreddailynews.com | Chris McGrath

While it is neither the habit nor the place of this column to cite scripture, words that some of you may have heard last Sunday should resonate with everyone in this game: “Endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”Certainly we wouldn't have much of a business if the reverses we endure could not be parlayed into those attributes. We often refer to the Turf as “character-forming,” which always feels rather ambivalent.

2 weeks ago | thoroughbreddailynews.com | Chris McGrath

There's nothing a horse can tell Bob Duncan about the terrors of a confined space. He was already on the gate crew, back in 1968, when he went to visit his parents at Laurel, where his dad was training a small string. After an evening at a nearby bar, his buddy threw him the keys. Different car, different handling. Coming to a railroad bridge, he suddenly realized that he wasn't going to make the turn. “We hit these cement pilings, plunged over the side,” Duncan recalls. “We had waist belts on.

2 weeks ago | thoroughbreddailynews.com | Chris McGrath

First and foremost, let's salute Journalism (Curlin) and his connections for confirming that only feebleness in horsemen, not horses, menaces the Triple Crown schedule. In last weekend replicating his Churchill challenge to crop leader Sovereignty (Into Mischief), moreover actually moving up his numbers, the only horse to contest all three legs demonstrated precisely the prowess that breeders have long sought from this series. That deserves to be remembered once Journalism goes to stud.