Though the calendar claims that summer started on June 21, horseplayers know the season doesn’t really begin until Del Mar and Saratoga open their doors. Now we can break out the sun lotion and get the party started!
Mike Brunker
Mike Brunker 's horse racing column is online Thursdays and appears in Friday's print edition of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Kelsey Riley of Lexington, Kentucky, is one of 40 riders preparing for the world’s longest horse race at 1,000 kilometers (more than 620 miles). They will attempt to traverse the Steppe in 10 days aboard 25 “semi-wild” Mongolian horses.
The stellar card features five graded stakes races, topped by the $1.2 million Belmont Derby Invitational, a 1 1/4-mile inner turf tussle for 3-year-olds that has drawn a field of top sophomores from the U.S. and Europe.
Experiential Squared’s Myracehorse app enables those who want to speculate to buy into an active racehorse or a promising prospect for as little as $100.
In the year since this column debuted, we have handicapped 94 races at 24 different tracks and show a profit of $20.10 on a mythical $2 win bet on the handicappers’ top picks. That works out to a return on investment of $2.20.
A chain of events during the early stages of the race that appear to have been orchestrated to achieve a Triple Crown sweep by Justify leave a sour taste in the mouths of many racing fans.
The Bob Baffert-trained son of Scat Daddy already had rewritten racing’s history books by breaking the so-called “Curse of Apollo,” becoming the first horse to win the Kentucky Derby without having raced as a 2-year-old.
Kerry Thomas, a self taught equine sports psychologist, says the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner “has the mental aptitude and physical ability to win the Triple Crown.”
Racing fans who watched the second jewel of the Triple Crown came away with two distinct impressions of the race: Either Justify showed his mettle when tested for the first time or he showed he’s topped out and is on the way down.
The Kentucky Derby winner is 2-5 on the morning line for the second jewel of the Triple Crown, but he still has some questions to answer.
The Bob Baffert-trained colt ran a strong race to end the “curse of Apollo,” but his favorable trip over the “sloppy” racetrack means that questions remain to be answered before he can be considered one of the great ones.
The 3-1 favorite should get a favorable pace scenario, but can he last 1 1/4 miles? See what horse racing columnist Mike Brunker, the #RJhorseracing handicappers and guest experts Bob Ike, Patrick McQuiggan and Ellis Star think.
Narrowing the field to a manageable number of horses that you can return to when post positions are drawn for the Run for the Roses on Tuesday will give you an edge over handicappers who are grappling with a 20-horse field.
Speed figures are a great tool, but they are not a reliable crutch when it comes to deciphering a race as complicated and unique as the Run for the Roses.
The last two prep races for the Run for the Roses – the Arkansas Derby and Lexington Stakes – will be run on Saturday, leaving handicappers a mere three weeks to make sense of what has been an exhilarating run up to the main event.
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