Industry & National

Anne Eberhardt visits Old Friends and talks with Michael Blowen about Any Given Saturday in our new BH+ series Watch the video here,

NEW YORK/SARATOGA SPRINGS — I Think I Love You Animal Foundation, Inc.  – a 501c3 nonprofit organization based in New York created in memory of David Cassidy – was contacted through their Facebook page that former racehorse Dixieland Squall was on her way to a kill pen in a matter of days. The 19-year-old thoroughbred had […]

Million-dollar yearling, grade 1 winner, and successful sire Any Given Saturday arrived the afternoon of March 6 at Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Farm from an eight-year tour of duty as a stallion in South Korea. The 19-year-old son of Distorted Humor was pensioned from stud duty following last year’s breeding season. Michael Blowen, founder and […]

Long before trainer Ron Moquett saddled 2020 Champion Male Sprinter Whitmore, he earned his first Grade 1 win in astounding fashion with 91-1 longshot Seek Gold in the 2006 Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs. The six-year-old bay gelding was making his first start for Moquett and new owners Kristi Couch and Ted Bowman, who had claimed […]

Trainer Doug O’Neill announced Wednesday that his Hall of Fame stable pony, Lava Man, will retire from his racetrack duties following this year’s Breeders’ Cup. The 21-year-old gelding will take up residence at Old Friends in Lexington, Ky. Claimed out of his 13th start for $50,000, Lava Man (Slew City Slew) won 17 of his […]

A fixture at Del Mar for the past two decades is missing this fall. Lava Man has been retired for a second time, leaving behind an illustrious career and a giant sentimental void in the Doug O’Neill barn. Read more at Horse Racing Nation.

GEORGETOWN, Ky. (LEX 18) — The oldest living Kentucky Derby winner has many fans around the world, and it’s Silver Charm’s reputation as one of the great American race horses that’s helping give back to other retired thoroughbreds that need it most. The horse is living out his retirement at Old Friends in Georgetown, but that doesn’t mean […]

On the 25th anniversary of the Touch Gold — Silver Charm Belmont Stakes, it is time to get nostalgic and recall my personal interest in that historic race and how the journalist and racing fan in me clashed and left part of me ecstatic and another part sad following the race, which is what happens […]

 It was just his second time at the Preakness, a race the future Hall of Fame trainer would later come to own, so pardon Bob Baffert if he was a little confused by the idiosyncrasies that come with being the second-oldest racetrack in the United States. In one of the most memorable finishes in the […]