The television audience watching the 148th Preakness Stakes at Pimlico on May 20 should be robust based on the announcement that Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve winner Mage will be pointed to the race, adding more excitem
The constant hustle and bustle of the racing industry is what propels it forward. Each year, a new select set of 3-year-olds begin their journey to the Run for the Roses at Churchill Downs for a chance at glory on a national stage – one which last week garnered the biggest audience on NBC Sports since the Super Bowl.
Twenty years into his retirement from a Hall of Fame career in college basketball, Denny Crum was at the Keeneland sales pavilion shopping for a stakes winner with trainer Dallas Stewart.
This was no new venture for Crum, who had been a racehorse owner since the mid-1970s and bred nearly a dozen winners through the late 1980s and ‘90s. Thoroughbred racing was yet another outlet for the man who loved to compete, whether it was basketball, golf, fishing, horse racing, or poker.
Behind every horse at this year’s Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve was an owner or a group of owners whose dreams were realized once the gate doors opened for the 149th run for the roses. Three high-profile owners, in particular, got to experience the thrill of having a horse in the race for the first time.
Another Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve is in the books, and the Triple Crown storyline will only intensify in the next couple of weeks as it appears that longshot winner Mage and his likeable connections will target the second jewel of the series, the May 20 Preakness Stakes at
