Churchill Downs

The Breeders' Cup, created as a roving championship of thoroughbred racing, shunned Louisville's Churchill Downs this week and announced it would return to Santa Anita Park in 2014 for a third consecutive year. Santa Anita, of course, is owned by the Stronach Group, which also owns Pimlico and Laurel. The same company is investing more than $100 million into its Gulfstream Park facility in Florida to turn it back into a Breeders' Cup-worthy venue . With massive renovations being drawn up for Pimlico, I thought it might be a good time to ask Maryland Jockey Club president Tom Chuckas if he thought Old Hilltop could ever host the Breeders' Cup. He laughed and said, "In this world, anything is possible.

The Breeders' Cup, created as a roving championship of thoroughbred racing, shunned Louisville's Churchill Downs this week and announced it would return to Santa Anita Park in 2014 for a third consecutive year. Santa Anita, of course, is owned by the Stronach Group, which also owns Pimlico and Laurel. The same company is investing more than $100 million into its Gulfstream Park facility in Florida to turn it back into a Breeders' Cup-worthy venue . With massive renovations being drawn up for Pimlico, I thought it might be a good time to ask Maryland Jockey Club president Tom Chuckas if he thought Old Hilltop could ever host the Breeders' Cup. He laughed and said, "In this world, anything is possible.

HORSE RACING Tiz Chrome euthanized after collapsing at Churchill Downs Tiz Chrome, a 3-year-old horse training for a final Kentucky Derby prep race, was euthanized after collapsing during a workout at Churchill Downs. Trainer Bob Baffert said the colt had a fatal fracture of the left front sesamoid during a workout Sunday morning. Tiz Chrome was scheduled to run in the Derby Trial on Saturday. Baffert said the colt was working with another horse and the two were heading into the far turn on the one-mile track when the injury occurred and Tiz Chrome fell, sending exercise rider Dana Barnes tumbling to the track.

Pimlico Race Course officials confirmed Wednesday there will be nine probable starters for Saturday's 138th running of the Preakness with the addition of Govenor Charlie, trained by Bob Baffert, a five-time winner of the race. Baffert had been leaning toward entering the lightly raced colt and gave the final word he would be coming Wednesday. Govenor Charlie is expected to arrive from Churchill Downs in Kentucky sometime on Thursday, according to Mike Gathagan, Pimlico's vice president for communications.

Bob Baffert joked this week that, if it rained on race day, he was going to instruct his wife, Jill, to go to the betting window and put $500 on Twice the Appeal, just because Calvin Borel was riding him, and over the past few years, no jockey has looked better on a wet and muddy track than Borel. He's won three of the last four Derbys, and two of them (2009 and 2010) came on a track that was less than considered sloppy. Borel -- whose nickname is "Bo-rail" because he likes to hug the rail whenever he gets a chance -- has already seen a ton of early action from betters this year, dropping Twice the Appeal's odds from 30-1 on Wednesday to 7-1 on Saturday.

As trainer Doug O'Neill spoke of winning a Triple Crown outside his Churchill Downs barn early Sunday morning, police investigated the suspicious death of a man 100yards away. Louisville metro police were made aware of the body shortly before 5 a.m., the morning after the Kentucky Derby attracted a record 165,307 people to the historic track. Investigators at the scene found evidence of an altercation and suspected foul play, police spokesperson Alicia Smiley said. They have no suspects at this time and are waiting for a report from the coroner's office to identify the victim.

Hansen does not need to try to be noticed. The nearly all-white colt always stands out among his peers. Yet on Thursday morning, the Breeders' Cup juvenile champion did all he could to draw the attention of a robust crowd on his first day this week at Churchill Downs. A 10-1 choice on the morning line for the 138th Kentucky Derby, Hansen's antics didn't leave trainer Mike Maker concerned. "Looks like he really had his eyeballs on Take Charge Indy out there," Maker said.

Rachel Alexandra, who won the 2009 Preakness, will run in the Grade II FleuDe Lis at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., on Saturday. "Rachel Alexandra continues to turn in strong works," owner Jess Jackson said in a statement released this morning. "As long as she continues to progress, we intend to race her with the expectation that she will obtain her fitness level of last year. Our ultimate goal and hope is to enter the Breeders Cup in November." Winless in two starts this year, the reigning Horse of the Year last raced in late April, finishing second to Unrivaled Belle in the Grade II La Troienne at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby weekend.

Most of the entries in the 138 th Kentucky Derby galloped at Churchill Downs this morning, staying loose in front of a growing crowd. Creative Cause, the striking grey horse who caused some intrigue when he didn't come out to the track the last two days, looked very strong. Hansen, the near-white colt who won the Breeder's Cup Juvenile here last year, looked small but athletic and playful. “He eats everything,” trainer Michael Maker said. “None of it sticks. He goofs around too much.” Hansen mostly appeared to vacilate between antagonizing other horses and preening for photos.

It's Oaks Day at Churchill Downs, and the color pink has grown over the vast grandstand and the sprawling infield. The “Pink Out” will help raise money for cancer charities, as it has done in recent years. That's all part of what the track has dubbed its “Ladies First” theme. Rosie Napravnik, who went to high school in Maryland and had a stint as the state's top jockey (winning all four titles in 2006), is hoping to become the first woman to win the race for top 3-year-old fillies.

Orb, the Kentucky Derby winner who will be the favorite to win Saturday's 138th running of the Preakness, rarely enters his stall until he has had time to graze. On Monday afternoon, the strapping colt co-owned by Baltimore County resident Stuart Janney III, had his first taste of Maryland's turf. He walked off a large transport van at about 3:20 p.m., striding past the assembled media toward Pimlico Race Course's Barn E. There, he has been assigned stall number 40, which housed all three Triple Crown winners of the 1970s during their trips to Baltimore.

First things first: Grantland has a terrific look-back at Hunter S. Thompson's "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved. " I always start the Derby primer with a link to this story -- and by always, I mean I also did it last year -- and this adds even more context to how the story came about. A very popular question I receive from fellow Baltimoreans upon my return to our fair city by the bay is: How does the Derby compare to Preakness? The answer I ended up giving usually went something like this: The Preakness debauchery seems to be compressed into one day and in one spot, the infield, where once upon a time people ran across the portable toilets for sport.

On Wednesday at Churchill Downs, a crowd clad mainly in Louisville basketball shirts gathered at Barn 45 to watch Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino as he visited a horse of which he owns five percent. Pitino, a month removed from becoming the first coach in NCAA history to win Division I basketball national championship tournaments with two different schools, appeared at trainer Doug O'Neill 's barn shortly after 8 a.m. and joined an entourage following Goldencents.

Security at Pimlico's historic Preakness barn will be heightened this year, a move that comes amid renewed concern about doping and horse safety in the sport. All visitors, including veterinarians, who want to spend time with horses scheduled to run in this year's Preakness will have to sign in at the barn off Winner Avenue, which will have just one entrance. Those new measures, adopted by the Maryland Racing Commission and Pimlico ownership, come in addition to surveillance measures and syringe-collection practices already in place for the second leg of the Triple Crown, scheduled to be run May 18 this year.

ESPN's Jeannine Edwards started her TV career as an in-track host at Pimlico and Laurel in the early 1990s. “It allowed me to learn television, because I came from a background of  training horses and had no TV experience,” she says. “So I owe a lot of my success and a debt of gratitude to the people in Maryland for giving me a start.” Edwards, who still calls Maryland home, is covering the Preakness for ESPN and ABC this week. Her reports will start appearing Friday on the sports channel and continue through the weekend.

Kentucky Derby winner I'll Have Another is one regal-looking horse, a real show-stopper with a distinctive white, diamond-shaped patch on his forehead. As he moved around a back barn at Pimlico Race Course on Wednesday, the chestnut colt trained by Doug O'Neill made the other horses look like fly-ridden plow nags. Now the question is: is he just another attractive Derby winner that will wilt in the pressurized environment of the Preakness a week from Saturday? Or can he duplicate the amazing run he had at Churchill Downs five days ago and make the Preakness special by giving us a legitimate Triple Crown hope?

Representatives of Churchill Downs and a group calle Virginia Racing Associates met in Richmond, Va., yesterday for about 2 1/2 hours to discuss the concept of forming a joint venture to build a racetrack in the Old Dominion."

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- The first of two major weekend events will occur today when Churchill Downs opens its Spring Meeting, featuring the Grade III Derby Trial. The second will occur tomorrow when Arazi arrives from France for the May 2 Kentucky Derby.Arazi, the overwhelming early favorite, was impressive in winning the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Nov. 2 at Churchill Downs. The Kentucky-bred colt has won seven of eight starts on the grass in France.Catire Bello, a Venezuelan-bred colt, probably will be the only one of the nine starters in the Grade III Trial who will go to the Derby.

As trainer Doug O'Neill spoke of winning a Triple Crown outside his Churchill Downs barn early Sunday morning, police investigated the suspicious death of a man 100yards away. Louisville metro police were made aware of the body shortly before 5 a.m., the morning after the Kentucky Derby attracted a record 165,307 people to the historic track. Investigators at the scene found evidence of an altercation and suspected foul play, police spokesperson Alicia Smiley said. They have no suspects at this time and are waiting for a report from the coroner's office to identify the victim.

It's Oaks Day at Churchill Downs, and the color pink has grown over the vast grandstand and the sprawling infield. The “Pink Out” will help raise money for cancer charities, as it has done in recent years. That's all part of what the track has dubbed its “Ladies First” theme. Rosie Napravnik, who went to high school in Maryland and had a stint as the state's top jockey (winning all four titles in 2006), is hoping to become the first woman to win the race for top 3-year-old fillies.