The Melbourne Cup is Australia’s major thoroughbred horse race. It is a race for three-year-olds and over and is the richest “two-mile” handicap in the world. Horse Talk – handicap: A handicap race in horse racing is a race in which horses carry different weights, assigned to them by the handicapper or racing secretary. A…
Orb won the 2013 Kentucky Derby finishing the race with a time of 2:02.89—two-and-a-half lengths ahead of Golden Soul and Revolutionary, which finished in second and third place, respectively. 1. One length = 8 feet or 2.4 metres. How far ahead of the second place finisher was Orb when he crossed the finish line? Give…
The Kentucky Derby is 3 days away and the horses are into their final workouts. Let’s compare how current favourites Orb, Revolutionary, Verrazano and Goldencents did this week compared with their competition. The timed workouts ranged from 4 to 6 furlongs. 1 furlong = 200m or 1/8 of a mile. 1. How far is 4…
Jockey Rosie Napravnik closed out a career-best season in 2012, securing the highest spot ever for a female jockey on the North American leader board. Finishing the year with $12,451,713 in purse earnings and 193 wins with 191 seconds and 167 thirds from 1,200 starts, Napravnik finished eighth among the top jockeys in the nation…
Calidoscopio, a 9-year-old Argentinean gelding, won the 1 ¾-mile 2012 Breeders’ Cup Marathon becoming the oldest horse ever to win a Breeders’ Cup race. There are several different ways to compare a horse’s age with a human’s age. Here is one way: Beginning at birth, horses age 6.5 years for each human year until they…
Frankel, hailed as the greatest horse of them all, has been retired after his 14th and final victory. For three hundred years breeders have plotted to create the perfect equine running machine. “I can’t believe that in the history of racing there has ever been a better racehorse,” said Frankel’s trainer, Sir Henry Cecil, after…
Linda Toscano became the first female trainer to win the sport’s most coveted prize when Market Share captured the $1.5 million, 87th edition of the Hambletonian at the Meadowlands on a Saturday afternoon in August. The race is trotted over a distance of one mile. In this year’s race the horses trotted the opening half…
Rachel Alexandra was the 2009 Horse of the Year, the first female to receive this honour since Azeri in 2002 and just the seventh to capture that title since 1936, when official voting for Horse of the Year was established. Her racing record made history. She became the first filly to win the Preakness since…