“The Racetracks of America: From the Pre-Civil War Days to the 21st Century,” a 440-page history of Thoroughbred racing venues nationwide, won the 20th Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award Nov. 4 during an evening ceremony in Lexington.
At 5 years old at Saratoga Race Course, Andie Biancone imagined the horses were her diner customers. “I would pretend that I was a waitress, and I’d pick grass for all the horses. I’d deliver the grass to their stalls and pretend like I was working in a diner and they were my customers. I got the horse bug from there. I was running at school, and I would gallop like a horse.
An exciting 2026 Breeders’ Cup is in the books, and this week the horse racing calendar shifts to an early fall focus, with the opening of Del Mar’s Bing Crosby meet set for Friday, Nov. 6, and meets at the new Belmont Park and at Churchill Downs underway.
Electric, bursting at the seams, remarkable, and fast and furious are just a sprinkling of the vivid descriptions for Fasig-Tipton’s November Sale printed over the years in the pages of BloodHorse magazine.
Billed decades ago as the “Night of the Stars” sale in the afterglow of the Breeders’ Cup World Championships, the November sale has morphed into much more than a Thoroughbred breeding stock auction. It is an event. Come for the “stars,” savor the fireworks.
