Arrogate’s brilliance, Gun Runner’s steady excellence and the emergence of a pair of top jockeys from Puerto Rico top columnist Mike Brunker’s recount of the year’s highlights.
Mike Brunker
Mike Brunker is an assistant city editor at the Review-Journal and he writes a weekly horse racing column. The column is posted on Thursday's and appears in Friday's print edition. He previously covered horse racing for the San Francisco Examiner, the Thoroughbred Times and NBCSports.com. Follow @mike_brunker on Twitter
The outpouring of support after last week’s tragic fire at San Luis Rey Downs in northwest San Diego County, which killed 46 horses, may ultimately burn as brightly as the so-called Lilac wildfire itself.
Industry leaders brace for Supreme Court ruling that could potentially open the flood gates for legal sports betting in the U.S.
Find out which other horses the early bird wagerers liked in the first Derby futures pool offered by Churchill Downs and which horse is most intriguing based on the betting patterns.
Futures betting is already available for the 2018 Kentucky Derby, but you’ll be better off playing the prep races.
Track’s bias in favor of closers means that some horses did not get a chance to run their best in last weekend’s races at Del Mar. Here’s what you need to do to benefit from that.
Gun Runner’s victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday restored some order to the universe after a topsy-turvy day of horse racing that produced an almost uninterrupted parade of long shots.
Be wary of jumping to conclusions based on such a small sample of races, but here are some early trends that will bear watching Saturday at the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar.
Many handicappers believe Gun Runner is in the best form of his career. The Del Mar linemaker is a member of this club, installing the Steve Asmussen-trained son of Candy Ride as the 9-5 morning line favorite in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
We know more about the lineups of the Breeders’ Cup races, but the precise matchups of many of the 13 Grade 1 races to be run Nov. 3 and 4 at Del Mar remain unclear. Here’s what we’ve learned and what we still don’t know.
The turf races in the first Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar look like they will attract a strong contingent from across the pond. Here are some of the big names being considered for the races on Nov. 3-4.
With three weeks to go until Del Mar hosts the thoroughbred world championship races for the first time, handicappers should be doing early work to ensure they’ll be ready for the two-day extravaganza on Nov. 3 and 4.
This simple formula will help you approximate every horse’s chances of winning and help spot the betting value in a race.
Under IRS rule change due by Nov. 14, reporting and withholding on multi-race and multi-horse tickets will be based on the total amount wagered, not the base amount of the bet.
Here are a few lessons from the first 17 races the #RJhorseracing handicapping group has collectively handicapped at eight racetracks.