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Attending the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve this year for the 152nd edition of the race? Congratulations! You’re one of the lucky few (OK, thousands), but for those of us not attending this year’s running at Churchill Downs — this writer included — there is still plenty at stake and many avenues to pursue.

America’s Best Racing (ABR), horse racing’s national fan-development platform and marketing initiative funded by The Jockey Club, and the Hennegan Brothers, three-time Eclipse Award-winning filmmakers, today announced a partnership to launch “UNBRIDLED,” the industry’s first made-for-social vertical docuseries. “UNBRIDLED” will focus on storytelling of racing’s major events, starting with the lead-up to the 2026 Kentucky Derby.

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.

Four years ago, Joel Funk walked into his first yearling sale at Keeneland and saw nearly $400 million change hands in less than two weeks. Billionaires, celebrities, and global power brokers gathered in Lexington, Ky., bidding on bloodstock. When others were talking recession, Funk was talking opportunity.

“I was just blown away,” Funk said. “You want to get the wealthiest people in the world in a room, have a horse sale.”

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