Wednesday, May. 7, 2025

Steeplechasing

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Check out amazing photos from barn night, with costumed grand prix riders, Shetland Pony races and plenty of barn spirit.

A Jockeys' Guild study, presented at the Jockeys’ Guild Assembly on Jan. 19 in Hollywood, Fla., supports the idea that all helmets involved in an impact should be replaced.

The study was conducted at Chesapeake Testing in Belcamp, Md., and it provided customized testing to mimic a fall on dirt or being stepped on by a horse.

ExtraExtraordinary, a 6-year-old gelding owned by Susan and Charles Strittmatter of Clorevia Farm in Virginia and trained by Doug Fout, was humanely euthanized on the track following a catastrophic injury in the third race of the Far Hills Race Meet in Far Hills, N.J. 

Jonathan Sheppard scores his 14th New York Turf Writers win with a homebred.

My big, fat Italian Wedding? Well, not anymore.

Italian Wedding, as Jonathan Sheppard explained, “was quite small when he was a young horse and a little on the chubby side. He was kind of...cute, but he didn’t look really look like any major race horse. He looked like a fat little pony.”

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He and Darren Nagle write off the feature race in Pennsylvania.

Deceptively tiring ground likely caused several upset wins at the Radnor Hunt Races, May 16.

Steady rains all week on the Malvern, Pa., course made it look lush and with a good cut in it, but once the horses started galloping and punching through the heavy turf, it soon took its toll on many of the favorites.

He uses the deep footing to his advantage as he takes down one of the titans of the sport.

Hardly a soul, least of all his jockey, knew anything about Pierrot Lunaire. But he ended one of the biggest Grade I winning streaks steeplechasing has ever seen.

“I had never ridden the horse in a race, which is nothing new, he just shipped over,” said rider Chip Miller. “Everyone knew about as much about the horse as I did—zero.”

Fox Ridge Farm’s 2007 novice champion Planets Aligned (Padge Whelan) stayed hidden behind a sea of mud being kicked up by Sheila Williams’ Rare Bush (Aizpuru) until the last fence when he surged ahead to win by less than a length in the $50,000 Marcellus Frost Hurdle Stakes.

Trainer Tom Voss of Monkton, Md., thought the ground might suit the 8-year-old grandson of Deputy Minister.

Valerie Kanavy has a new star on her hands.

May 2 saw the historic Biltmore Estate come alive with activity as an impressive line-up of who’s who in the endurance community converged on Asheville, N.C., for what has become one of the most competitive races in the East, the Biltmore Challenge Endurance Ride.

He gives his connections their first sanctioned win in this amateur contest.

When Adair Bonsal Stifel’s Vinnie Boy (Jacob Roberts) wore down the competition to win for new trainer Blythe Miller Davies, May 10, it was the first sanctioned win for all parties involved—horse, rider, trainer and owner. Always tricky, the amateur timber course at the Willowdale Steeplechase is comprised of ditches, a large water jump, natural hedges and timber fences.

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