Tag: The Friday Show

When the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance was established in 2012 with seed money from The Jockey Club, Keeneland, and Breeders' Cup, one of its goals was to establish sustainable funding upwards of $20 million a year from a wide swath of the industry.

A decade later, TAA – which both accredits and funds aftercare operations throughout the country – has fallen far short of that mark in annual funding.

In this week's Friday Show, TAA operations consultant Stacie Clark-Rogers joins Ray Paulick and bloodstock editor Joe Nevills  to talk about the successes of the organization and the challenges it faces, both in real terms and perceptions that many people have about aftercare.

“We haven't solved the problem and a lot of people would like to think we have,” said Clark-Rogers, calling the issue an “Achilles heel” for the industry.

“What we're trying to do here is improve the life of the horse, improve the life of the sport, and improve the life of the business and the opportunity for us to work in this industry,” she said. “It's not a touchy-feely, cute thing, aftercare,  It's part of our business.”

Watch this week's episode of the Friday Show below:

The post The Friday Show Presented By Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance: ‘We Haven’t Solved The (Aftercare) Problem’ appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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What does a surgical instrument used to treat cancer  have in common with TV shows like “Seinfeld,” “Frasier,” “The Odd Couple,” and “Peter Gunn,” or with the Grateful Dead band, the late turf writer Bill Handleman, or baseball star Cleon Jones of the 1969 Miracle Mets?

All have been the inspiration for Thoroughbred names given to his horses by Al Gold.

The most famous of them is Cyberknife the two-time Grade 1 winner in 2022, who makes one final career start in Saturday's $3-million, Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park before going off to stud at Spendthrift Farm. The  Gun Runner colt is named for the instrument doctors used to treat Gold's prostate cancer several years ago and he wanted to raise awareness of its effectiveness

Gold is this week's guest on the Friday Show, joining Ray Paulick and bloodstock editor Joe Nevills to talk about the thrills he's had with Cyberknife, his up-and-coming 3-year-old colt Instant Coffee (winner of the Grade 3 Lecomte Stakes Jan. 21), the bloodstock team he's assembled, and the fun he's had naming some of the horses in his stable.

Watch this week's episode of the Friday Show below:

The post The Friday Show Presented By Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance: The Gold Standard appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Trainer Keith Desormeaux has carved out an impressive niche, developing low-priced sales yearlings and 2-year-olds into graded stakes winners and contenders for the 3-year-old classics.

Texas Red, winner of the Grade 1 Breeders' Cup Juvenile in 2014, cost just $17,000 at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. My Boy Jack, winner of the G3 Southwest and Stonestreet Lexington Stakes in 2018, was a $20,000 bargain at that same sale who earned $776,897. Exaggerator, a $3.6 million earner and winner of three G1 races in 2016 including the Preakness and was runner-up in the G1 Kentucky Derby, was a $110,000 Keeneland September graduate.

The Louisiana native is back at it with Confidence Game, a Candy Ride colt out of a half sister to Zenyatta scooped out of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale for a mere $25,000. Now winner in two of five starts, Confidence Game will try to give Desormeaux back-to-back wins in Saturday's G3 Lecomte Stakes, a race he captured in 2022 with $80,000 OBS March Sale purchase Call Me Midnight at odds of 28-1. The Lecomte is a qualifying points race for the Kentucky Derby giving the first five finishers 20-8-6-4-2 points, respectively.

Desormeaux joins Ray Paulick and bloodstock editor Joe Nevills in this week's Friday Show to talk about Confidence Game and what he looks for (and is willing to forgive) when he goes shopping for racing prospects.

The trainer is bullish on Confidence Game, calling him as talented a colt as he's ever trained, though he cautioned it's still early days on the road to the classics. “He's got soundness. He's got class. He's got speed. He's got pedigree,” said Desormeaux. “And according to his last race, he's got a fighting spirit, too.”

Watch this week's episode of the Friday Show below:

The post The Friday Show Presented By PHBA Stallion Auction: Desormeaux Bullish On Confidence Game In Lecomte appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Trainer Keri Brion is this week's guest on the Friday Show, where she advocates for steeplechase racing and for Eclipse Awards voters not to skip over that category and abstain in year-end voting for racing's annual championships.

Brion, who opened a public stable in 2021 that includes horses racing over jumps and on the flat, is a former assistant to Hall of Fame conditioner Jonathan Sheppard, who retired from training in 2021. She campaigned steeplechase Eclipse Award winner The Mean Queen in her first full year of training and in 2022 became just the second trainer to exceed $1 million in steeplechase earnings in a single season in North America.

Brion's appearance is a followup to the Jan. 6 Friday Show in which voting for 2022 Eclipse Awards was discussed and both bloodstock editor Joe Nevills and guest Andrew Champagne said they abstained from voting in the steeplechase category. Their comments and an earlier Making Claims column by Nevills elicited a letter from steeplechase trainer Kate Dalton and a subsequent wave of comments on social media.

Brion offers a primer to Nevills and publisher Ray Paulick on the sport itself and efforts to grow its popularity, some of steeplechasing's most important races, differences in race courses, the type of horses she looks for to convert to jumps, and the similarities to training horses for the two disciplines. It's a lively and interesting discussion that Brion hopes will lead to a better understanding of the game and fewer abstentions in future Eclipse Awards voting.

Watch this week's episode of the Friday Show below:

The post The Friday Show Presented By PHBA Stallion Auction: Steeplechase Primer From Trainer Keri Brion appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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