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Joe Clancy 
In about a week, it will be over. The 2015 National Steeplechase Association season will join the 120 or so before it in the past. In advance of the Colonial Cup next Saturday Nov. 21, let’s try to get caught up on the season that was.
Maryland stud farm Heritage Stallions announced this week that graded stakes-winning millionaires Bourbon Courage and Imagining will retire to the Chesapeake City farm for the 2016 breeding season.
Graham Motion is on the road with Icabad Crane again. Just a little more than two years since saddling the multiple graded stakes winner for his last start, Motion and wife Anita will catch a flight Saturday morning to watch their 10-year-old gelding compete in the Hagyard MidSouth CCI* three-day event at Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington.
By popular demand, or something like that anyway, the team will do Closer Looks at all seven races on the Far Hills card Saturday. They’re a good way to get acquainted with the horses, the races, the tasks at hand.
By popular demand, or something like that anyway, the team will do Closer Looks at all seven races on the Far Hills card Saturday. They’re a good way to get acquainted with the horses, the races, the tasks at hand.
See You Then, Sprinter Sacre, Long Run . . . more wins at the Cheltenham Festival than any active trainer . . . Remittance Man, Binocular, Simonsig . . . champion British jump trainer three times . . . Punjabi, Bobs Worth, Oscar Whiskey . . . more than 500 wins in the last five seasons . . .
By popular demand, or something like that anyway, the team will do Closer Looks at all seven races on the Far Hills card Saturday. They’re a good way to get acquainted with the horses, the races, the tasks at hand.
By popular demand, or something like that anyway, the team will do Closer Looks at all seven races on the Far Hills card Saturday. They’re a good way to get acquainted with the horses, the races, the tasks at hand.
Medication rules in American Thoroughbred racing are built on trainer responsibility and there really isn’t any other way. If a horse tests positive for a banned substance, or above the legal limit for an approved substance, the trainer gets the blame. But trainer Graham Motion, hit with the first medication violation in his 23-year career this week, questions the mechanics of such a standard.
During a short stay in Saratoga last summer, jump jockey Jack Doyle got to know Bob Le Beau – partnering the horse in two novice hurdle stakes and riding him in the mornings – then went home to Ireland. Doyle returned this spring and reunited with Bob Le Beau again at the Maryland farm of trainer Elizabeth Voss.
