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Keeneland President and Chief Executive Officer Shannon Arvin was working with Chief Financial Officer Hunter Stout last autumn when he mentioned in passing that he would have to miss his son’s first T-Ball game.

When Arvin initially urged him to go, Stout declined since it was a typically busy Saturday with six races remaining. She insisted he rush off to see Jack do his darndest to put bat to ball.

Laura Otten had previously owned an off-the-track Thoroughbred and always intended to return to riding and horse ownership. Over the years, she had followed several aftercare organizations, hoping to adopt another Thoroughbred someday. When the COVID-19 pandemic happened, it unexpectedly accelerated those plans. Otten began actively searching for her next horse, specifically a gelding suited for pleasure riding and low-level Eventing.

This upcoming weekend, the final stretch of prep races for the May 2 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve begin, with each race save one offering a total of 200 qualifying points to the top five finishers.

Horse racing is a sport full of jargon: for hardcore fans of the game, the sentence, “He worked a bullet over three panels in 35 and change” makes absolute and perfect sense. (The translation is: this horse was the fastest workout of the morning going three-eighths of a mile, traveling the distance in just over 35 seconds.)

The 98th Academy Awards arrives Sunday, March 15 beginning at 7 p.m. ET, and horse racing aficionados can revel in the implicit recognition the sport of kings annually receives when journalists and film buffs adopt racing’s handicapping lingo to forecast the night’s winners.

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