Tim Tebow to be Keynote Speaker at Race for Grace

The 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow will be the keynote speaker at the 2024 Race for Grace Gala and Auction, the Kentucky Chaplaincy announced via a release Monday.

Held in conjunction with Kentucky Derby 150 week celebrations Monday, Apr. 29 at Churchill Downs on Millionaires' Row, a silent and live auction including items such as 2025 Kentucky Derby and Oaks boxes, halters from Derby 150 contenders, sign Tebow items, horse racing art, etc., look to be the feature. Along with the keynote speaker, WinStar Farm's Elliott Walden and Hall of Famer Pat Day will host the evening events.

Race for Grace tickets are limited and sponsorships are welcome with more information available here.

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Pat Day Joins The TDN Writers’ Room Podcast

Just a few days removed from his 70th birthday, Pat Day joined the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland to talk his career, what he's been up to since retiring in 2005 and, most of all, the Breeders' Cup. Day rode Wild Again to victory in the inaugural GI Breeders' Cup Classic in 1984 and it was an historic win that helped turn the future Hall of Famer into one of the biggest stars in the sport. Day was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week.

“What that race meant for my career was monumental,” Day said. “First of all, let me back up. In January of 84, that was when I came to Christ. I was a stone alcoholic and a drug addict and was still highly successful in the midst of that. On January 27th of 1984, I accepted Christ into my life and got set free from that addictive lifestyle. I recognized that God had blessed me with tremendous talent and ability and opportunities and I started treating that with the respect that it deserved. Subsequently, I had an incredible year capped by the victory with Wild Again in the inaugural Breeders' Cup. That helped secure my first of four Eclipse Awards. I don't know that you could put a price on just what that did for my career. It was tremendous and catapulted me to the next level. I started getting opportunities after that to participate in the major races all over the country and to ride some of the top choices in those races.

If the Wild Again win was Day's top Breeders' Cup moment, his loss to Sunday Silence aboard Easy Goer in the 1989 Classic was surely his worst.

“When they came off the turn, Easy Goer was slow to change leads,” Day said. “He finally did. When he did, he caught on and accelerated, but obviously it was too little, too late. There was just so much hanging in the balance. The Eclipse Award for top 3-year-old. Horse of the Year. There were some tremendous accolades that hung in the balance. That Breeders' Cup was hard and the second hardest pill to swallow with him would have been the Preakness. I think I rode a horrible race and I think that I cost him the race in the Preakness. Easy Goer was a great horse. The best I ever rode. I know the record doesn't reflect it but I still think he was better than Sunday Silence.”

Who was his toughest opponent?

“Day in and day out, the smartest, strongest rider I rode against on a regular basis was Jerry Bailey,” Day said. “He would draw up a game plan and he was able to implement that game plan just about every time.”

Who was the most competitive rider he ever went up against?

“With that subject, Angel Cordero's name always comes up,” he said. “We would laughingly say he could ride two or three horses in a race. Angel, I love you, man. He was an astute handicapper. And if he handicapped the race and he felt that you had the horse to beat, he was going to beat you. He felt like if he beat you he would win the race. He was very competitive.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by 1/ST Racing, the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, WinStar Farm, the KTOB, XBTV and West Point Thoroughbreds, the team of Zoe Cadman, Randy Moss and Bill Finley discussed Frankie Dettori's decision to postpone his retirement and focus on U.S. racing in 2024 and the GI Kentucky Derby. The team agreed that Dettori, who has been riding in top form this year, deserved at least one more year. Finley predicted he might decide to keep riding for two or three more years. They also reviewed last week's action which included a win by European shipper Mawj (Ire) (Exceed and Excel {Aus}) in the GI Queen Elizabeth Challenge Cup S. at Keeneland and the ultra-impressive win by City of Troy (Justify) in the G1 Dewhurst S. at Newmarket.

To watch the Writers' Room, click here. To view the show as a podcast, click here.

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Pat Day Among New Board Members At The Kentucky Derby Museum

Hall of Fame rider Pat Day was one of four new members named to the board of the Kentucky Derby Museum Sept. 15, the organization said in a release late Thursday.

Joining Day, the other new Derby Museum board members include:

  • Mark Bacon, SVP Managing Director – Super Premium American Whiskey
  • Ashley Davis Sigman, Vice President of Davis Jewelers
  • Eamon O'Brien, General Manager of Omni Louisville

Outgoing board members Brandy Harmon, Michael Judah, and Loren Hebel-Osborne were honored during the meeting for completing their terms of service. The late Clinton Glasscock was also recognized for his 12 years of service to the board.

A new board chair was unanimously approved. The board's vice chair, David Nett, was then selected to replace outgoing chair Glenn Haygood. Haygood served two years in that position and is now Immediate past chair.

“I'm pleased to see the incredible success that is a result of the board's collaboration and partnership with the Kentucky Derby Museum over the years,” said Haygood. “The Museum is on track to hit record attendance for 2023, and that momentum will only continue through what is expected to be an epic Derby 150.”

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Week In Review: Racing On Christmas A Thing of the Past, But Legend Lives On

The annual Dec. 26 start of the Santa Anita season has a natural, anticipatory, turn-the-page vibe to it. But this mark-your-calendar Opening Day mainstay hasn't always been a post-holiday tradition. Although Santa Anita has kicked off its winter/spring meet on the day after Christmas every year since 1977, the track originally opened in 1934 on Christmas Day itself, and did so for the first four years of its existence.

“Filmdom entirely forgot its world of make-believe to migrate to the Santa Anita track yesterday for the renewal of horse racing in Los Angeles,” the Los Angeles Times gushed when reporting on the huge turnout of Hollywood movie stars and celebrities when Santa Anita held its first-ever races on Dec. 25, 1934.

“They rubbed elbows with Angelinos and society folk, and jostled through the crowd of 30,000 spectators to get a hot dog or place a bet, and joined in the cheer that swept over the giant racing plant as the horses left the barrier for the first race,” the front-page spread stated.

History tells us that way back when, Santa Anita wasn't alone in racing on Christmas Day.

Thumb through chart books and old newspaper clippings, and you'll get a flavor of when Christmas in North America was more of a social holiday than a commercial one; when going to the races on Dec. 25 was a festive outing centered on celebrating with friends and strangers alike.

As far back as the 1880s and early into the 20th Century, Christmas Day racing was routine at major warm-weather North American venues such as Oakland, California; Havana, Cuba; Juarez and Tijuana in Mexico, plus at other, long-gone Thoroughbred outposts like Jefferson in Louisiana and Savannah, Georgia.

There is even evidence that “outlaw” Thoroughbred tracks in bone-chilling climes like New Jersey, Illinois, and Missouri raced on Christmas through roughly 1900, purely because people would turn out to bet on the low-level unsanctioned racing those venues offered. Action, after all, was action.

By 1938 though, Santa Anita opted to switch off of Christmas Day racing in favor of opening on New Year's Eve. That experiment didn't last, and for the better part of the next 15 seasons or so, the SoCal track's start date fluctuated within the last week of December depending on how the calendar fell.

The first Dec. 26 Santa Anita opener was not until 1949, according to a retrospective the Los Angeles Times ran in 2012: “Since 1952, the day after Christmas has been Santa Anita's opening day in all but five seasons, and all seasons since 1977. Now to open any other day would seem sacrilegious.”

The Fair Grounds in New Orleans and Tropical Park in Florida were the two main tracks on the continent that continued to card Christmas Day racing through the middle of the 20th Century.

Eventually, Florida's tracks became the only torch-carriers for Christmas Day racing in America. Calder Race Course embraced the tradition after Tropical closed in 1972, and Hialeah Park even briefly gave it a go when it reopened from closure in 1991.

Yes, Virginia, There Is…

The now-defunct Calder also often raced on Christmas Eve, too. The finale on Dec. 24, 1992, was a $7,500 claimer in which an aptly named mare called Silent Knight got pounded in the betting to 7-5 favoritism. She won, of course. The margin was a nose (presumably red).

You'd think Silent Knight's victory might go down in history as the all-time holiday hunch play.

It isn't.

That distinction belongs to a 9-year-old Canadian-bred named Santa Claus, who romped home first in a Christmas Eve claimer at the Fair Grounds in 1976, delivering a $7.20 win mutuel to his merry backers.

After arriving in the paddock with his tail tied in red and white ribbons and a festive stocking cap perched atop his head, Santa Claus trailed until the final turn in a 1 1/16 miles route race, then rushed up the rail with a flourish turning for home.

“Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus…” the track announcer began crooning, with the crowd laughing and joining in to sing the carol, according to the Associated Press account of the race.

The Grinch Known as Simulcasting…

You can bet that Hall-of-Fame jockey Mike Smith remembers the Christmas Day he spent at Calder in 1993.

Smith, 28 at the time and just emerging as a top New York-based rider, flew to Florida because he had a chance to tie Pat Day's then-record of 60 stakes wins in a calendar year. Smith caught a big break when the holiday feature, the Tropical Park Oaks, got split into two divisions at entry time. He landed on the two favorites-and in the winner's circle-with both mounts.

“Someone up there must be looking out for me, and these horses must know,” Smith said after the wins.

Five days later, back at Aqueduct, Smith would win his 61st stakes of the year, giving him sole possession of the record (which has since been Scrooged by several other riders). The feat helped him earn his first Eclipse Award as the nation's outstanding jockey.

The following year, the 1994 Christmas Day program at Calder would turn out to be its last.

While the holiday cards were considered decent on-track days in terms of attendance and handle (6,473 people turned out to bet $925,632 on-track in 1994), by 1995 Calder management decided that it would rather forego racing on the holiday to be open the day after, when more off-track betting parlors and simulcast tracks nationwide would be open to import the signal.

Today, Camarero Race Track in Puerto Rico is the only North American track with regular racing on Christmas Day.

At all the stateside venues, not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.

Yet it turned out that a sizable chunk of customers cried “Humbug!” when Calder pulled the plug on Christmas Day racing.

As Calder president Ken Dunn told the Miami Herald in 1995, for many people, the racetrack was a refuge (fast-forward to 2022: it still is). Particularly for the elderly who might not have family, going racing was a way to fill the hours.

Plus, Dunn added, “There are a lot of people who don't celebrate Christmas.”

Dunn's predecessor, the late Kenny Noe, who oversaw Calder during its decades-long run of holiday racing, told the Herald in that same article he had a different theory about why Christmas was so popular with racegoers.

“A lot of men would show up at the track and tell me their wives had told them to get the hell out of the house but be home by 4 o'clock for dinner,” said Noe, an old-school track exec who was never one to mince words.

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