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Charismatic Kid (lot 28) headlined Friday's Tattersalls Cheltenham December Sale when bought by trainer Gordon Elliott for £300,000. Consigned by Colm Ryan Racing, the son of Affinisea was an impressive winner of a Navan bumper last week. “He looks a nice horse,” said Elliott after outbidding Tessa Greatrex for the gelding. “We were at the races when he won and he won well. Colm has done a great job with him, so fair play to him. The horse won't jump a hurdle this season. We will see if he is okay for a bumper in the spring.” Elliott was responsible for buying four of the 23 lots that changed hands, with his other purchases including the impressive point winner Thinkitdontjinxit (Vadamos) (lot 20) from Denis Murphy's Ballyboy Stables at £185,000. Elsewhere, Anthony Bromley of Highflyer Bloodstock also struck a meaningful blow when stretching to £200,000 to secure Order On Time from Sean Doyle's Monbeg Stables. Runner-up on his point debut at Turtulla last month, the son of Order Of St George was bought to embark on a career under Rules with Paul Nicholls. Total turnover for Tattersalls Cheltenham's final sale of 2025 reached £1,936,000, with the clearance rate coming in at 85%. The average was £84,174 and the median was £60,000. The post Charismatic Kid Tops Friday’s Tattersalls Cheltenham December Sale at £300K appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

Grade I winner Sandman (Tapit) posted his first work at Oaklawn Park Friday morning a week after arriving on grounds in advance of his 4-year-old debut in February. The GI Arkansas Derby hero went an easy half-mile in :49 flat, the 19th fastest of 73 at the distance, under exercise rider Autumn Lavertu over a fast track following the first surface renovation break. Clockers had his splits as an opening quarter in :25 and :36.80 for three furlongs. He galloped out five furlongs in 1:02. “Just have an easy half for him,” said assistant trainer Caden Arthur, who oversees Mark Casse's Oaklawn division. “His first breeze here, so I didn't want anything, like, too fast. Looked great on the track. Very comfortable.” Sandman has been unraced since late August, and had previously been based at Casse's Florida training center where he had published works Nov. 26 and Dec. 3 at three furlongs and a half-mile, respectively. “Hopefully, start looking for a race, maybe early February, middle February,” said Arthur. Casse went on record in November when stating that a major spring objective for the grey in 2026 would be the GII Oaklawn Handicap Apr. 18. The post Sandman Works Toward 2026 Return to Racing at Oaklawn Park appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

Trainer Linda Rice captured a record 165th training win on the New York Racing Association circuit for 2025 when Snide posted a 28-1 upset in the fourth race Dec. 12 at Aqueduct Racetrack.View the full article

Trainer Linda Rice captured a record 165th training win on the NYRA circuit for 2025 when owned/trained Snide (Tonalist) won race 4 at Aqueduct Friday. Snide stepped into the maiden special weight out of the maiden claimers for the third jump of her career, and dueled her rivals into submission to win by 4 3/4 lengths in a final time of 1:41.23. Rice is also the leading owner on the NYRA circuit this year with 58 wins, and the conditioner credited her entire team, including assistant Marsha Barrs, for the successes. “My team has done a tremendous job all year. We get this done because of them. My office staff, the exercise riders, grooms and hotwalkers–they're all working hard every day,” Rice said. “We're always trying to continue to improve our stable and our results. Over the past 5-to-10 years, I've really concentrated on New York racing, and the stable has certainly improved along the way.” Rice is closing in on her second year-end title as well, having already earned leading trainer honors at the Aqueduct winter [51 wins] and Aqueduct spring [15] meets. She is currently the leading trainer at the Aqueduct fall meet with 24 wins. “It's quite remarkable,” Rice said. “I train for Mr. Ralph Evans; Jon Clay of Alpha Delta Stable; Barry Schwartz; Chester Broman; Jane Lyon of Summer Wind Farm and Winning Move Stable to name a few. I'm very proud to have horses with all of them.” The post Linda Rice Establishes Single-Season NYRA Record with 165 Training Wins appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

High-class filly Zarigana, who was awarded this year's Poule d'Essai des Pouliches in the stewards' room after suffering interference from the first past the post, Shes Perfect (Sioux Nation), has been retired from racing. Speaking from Hong Kong, trainer Francis-Henri Graffard told Sky Sports Racing, “She [Zarigana] is retired now. She has been a complicated filly and she has been very frustrating this season. I think she was so talented, but difficult and tricky. She could have won four Group 1s and only managed to win one in the stewards' room. She has been a frustrating filly this year and we've had hard days with her.” The Aga Khan Studs homebred heads to the paddocks as the winner of four of her seven starts for the Graffard stable. In addition to her controversial success at ParisLongchamp in May, the daughter of Siyouni filled the runner-up spot at the top level on three other occasions. Beaten just a nose by stablemate Vertical Blue (Mehmas) in last year's Prix Marcel Boussac, she later followed her Classic victory with near-misses in both the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot and Prix de la Foret back at ParisLongchamp. The post ‘We’ve Had Hard Days With Her’ – Classic Winner Zarigana Retired From Racing appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

Toaster (McKinzie) firmed into even-money favoritism at the off, took command of what appeared to be a wide-open race in upper stretch and kept on nicely to graduate at first asking Friday at Los Alamitos. Drawn one from the outside, the $247,000 Fasig-Tipton October yearling turned $525,000 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic breezer showed enough early toe to track the pace from well off the inside beneath Juan Hernandez. Allowed to stride into the lead approaching the long straight, Toaster was asked for her best five away from the fence leaving the quarter pole and withstood all challenges to the wire, prevailing by a bit more than a length. Toaster is the second winner out of an unplaced half-sister to SW & GSP Quiet Dance (Quiet American), whose dozen winners include Horse of the Year & MGISW Saint Liam (Saint Ballado), GISW Funtastic (More Than Ready) and GSW Quiet Giant (Giant's Causeway). 3rd-Los Alamitos, $46,500, Msw, 12-12, 2yo, f, 6 1/2f, 1:16.62, ft, 1 1/4 lengths. TOASTER (f, 2, McKinzie–Paulownia, by Quiet American) Sales history: $247,000 Ylg '24 FTKOCT; $525,000 2yo '25 EASMAY. Lifetime Record: 1-1-0-0, $27,000. Click for the Equibase.com chart. O-Sarah Kelly & William Strauss; B-Whisper Hill Farm LLC (KY); T-Bob Baffert.   The post McKinzie Filly Toaster Too Tough On Los Al Debut appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

Dylan Browne McMonagle admits it will be hard to top his breakthrough 2025, when he won his first Irish jockeys' championship and scored in the Breeders' Cup Turf (G1T) at Del Mar, but he has no intention of resting on his laurels.View the full article

The Thoroughbred transcends borders, oceans, entire cultures. To do so literally, of course, it will need a little help: ideally, nowadays, a plane. And that's where Andrea Branchini's day job comes in, as a shipping clerk with the transport firm Mersant International. But this is a man himself without frontiers. Branchini has lived and worked in five different countries, and traveled widely in between, constantly absorbing what makes one society different from another, and what brings them together. Few fields of interest, Branchini has observed, achieve the latter quite like the Turf. Few horsemen, equally, can ever have absorbed its myriad stories and characters through quite so erudite a filter. TDN readers have occasionally been able to sample Branchini's omniscience through his explanation of arcane or witty horse names (“What's In A Name?”); and many in the professional community will have done likewise while enjoying his company at the sales. But now Branchini's Lexington neighbors are being offered the opportunity to tap into his knowledge on a more formal basis, in the nine-week course he will be offering at the Carnegie Center in the new year. They should be lining up round the block, for even so exceptional a store of knowledge becomes almost incidental to the charm with which Branchini dips into it, with his Italian accent thankfully resistant to the erosion of his years in America. Branchini was educated at one of the world's oldest universities, in his hometown Bologna, from which he holds a degree in Philosophy. His father, an engineer, had a passion for Standardbreds, as both owner and amateur driver; and was evidently also the source of Branchini's Wanderlust, leaving Italy to seek his fortune in North America in 1959. The horses retained their allure–Branchini has pictures of him at the 1966 Kentucky Derby–but would eventually also summon him home to Italy, after 20 years, to manage the celebrated San Siro racecourse in Milan. Branchini stayed in the United States, working in New York for a daily newspaper serving the Italian-American community, Il Progresso Italo-Americano. But then his own wanderings began: after a stint back in Italy, he joined the bloodstock and shipping agency Horse France. “Only with the idea that with this job I could live in Paris, and live a bohemian life,” he admits. “And I do treasure that time. I didn't actually produce any art, but I suppose it was quite bohemian. There was a hotel in Rue de Nesle, a bit of a commune where they put you in rooms with other people. I did stay two nights but there were people in my room, playing the guitar and smoking marijuana until 6 a.m., and I had to show up at the office at 8 a.m. And I thought, 'This is not going to work!'” So Branchini moved to a hotel where the only phone was in the lobby and they ran a stopwatch on his calls home to Italy. But his English was better than his French, so when the company opened a branch in Ireland he was posted there for a couple of years, before transferring to Newmarket. Finally in 1991 he started his own venture. “There was a lot of business,” he recalls. “When you're based in England, you have the Middle East, you have America, even destinations in the Far East like Japan and Malaysia. The Breeders' Cup was getting bigger and bigger, and a lot of Europeans were going to Keeneland with the big sale now in September. In a way those were pioneering years.” Sir Henry Cecil with Prince Khalid bin Abdullah | ScoopDyga One useful connection was with his compatriot Luciano Gaucci, whose Tony Bin (Ire) won the G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in 1988. That opened a lot of new doors, and consolidated existing relationships with the likes of Sir Henry Cecil. “Those were happy days,” Branchini says. “It was my company, so of course I burned the midnight oil. It wasn't always easy to be an Italian in the Newmarket of those days: it was still very much 'Olde England' and you needed a lot of cultural preparation to know how to deal with it, to understand how the system works.” His three children were all duly born in Cambridge, but their mother is American and it was agreed to raise them in her homeland. So Branchini reconnected with Horse France, before joining Mersant in 2014. “I have always been a sales guy,” he says. “I would stay at Tattersalls all day, and it's the same here. I'm not very pushy, I don't chase ambulances. But in England, it was very easy for me to talk with Americans, having lived here; and then, when I came here, even the trainers and agents who hadn't been clients in Newmarket would talk to me, because I was a known quantity to them. I think the British, in particular, quite like some familiarity when they're abroad.” So much for his industry credentials. But Branchini has meanwhile always enriched his cultural hinterland, a voracious curiosity nourishing parallel academic activity both as student and teacher. For the last 10 years he has taught his native language to Lexington Italophiles; while he has topped up his Philosophy degree at the University of Kentucky besides also earning a B.A. in History. Recently his evergreen enthusiasm led him to pursue a course in writing for theatre. “Of course it's all young people,” he says with a shrug. “I'm Italian and 70 years of age, but I think they appreciate having somebody different around.” In this upcoming course, Branchini will take to a new level some of the territory he covered in a somewhat experimental spirit back in 2019. “I enjoyed that and was amazed by the variety of the people who came,” he recalls. “There were a couple who wanted to know more for their betting, there was a farm owner, there were Flying Start students, grooms, interns.  One person said, 'I've learned more in this course than I did at university!' Somebody in Arizona asked for tapes to be sent. So I saw that there was an appetite for something like this. The Thoroughbred world is very complicated. For everyone who wants to work in it, or participate in any way, it takes a lot of knowing. “A lot of people who go to Keeneland races in the spring really don't know much about it. If we can give them a frame of reference, they will enjoy the spectacle so much more. But my hope is that this course can benefit anybody: both people who work in the business, or on farms, at all levels; and also people living here, surrounded by the industry, without really knowing about it.” Keeneland's Library has supported Branchini's scholarly endeavors | Keeneland Library Branchini is grateful for the support of the Keeneland Library, and will be hosting guest lecturers through the program. He hopes that industry employers might sponsor the attendance of staff whose professional engagement could be elevated by a course designed both to inform and enthuse. “This is a labor-intensive industry that will never be automated,” he notes. “And it has an increasing labor shortage.” Not that anyone needs a particular reason, beyond the fascination of a world as teeming with color and character as ours. “People like Tesio, Boussac, their stories are so interesting,” Branchini says. “The theory of breeding has plenty of pseudo-science, really it's theory against theory, a lot of gray areas. I've studied anthropology and when you read about Mendelism and so on, you see how it would actually all be quite boring if it were all a science. “I don't think I've led a particularly remarkable life. There has been a lot of drifting. But I've seen how my Italian classes have produced a community, among the students. And now, with this long life, and all these experiences of the horse industry in different countries, I would like to share that with whoever might like to listen.” History and Geography of the Thoroughbred, with Andrea Branchini and guest speakers: Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, 251 W. 2nd St, Lexington, KY 50507. $110 for nine Tuesday sessions as follows: February 3: Origins–foundation stallions, the first Epsom Derby (1780), the Stud Book (Weatherbys); February 10: Worldwide Expansion–including the stories of Federico Tesio and Marcel Boussac; February 17: The Stallion–from the classic era of the 30/40-share stallion to the large books of today (scientific progress/shuttling); February 24: USA Beginnings and Consolidation, 18th & 19th Centuries–including the black jockeys's era; March 3: Kentucky Derby–and the ascent of Keeneland; March 10: Geography–Japan, Australia, England, Ireland, France, Italy, Germany; March 17: Modern Times–commercialization, Sangster vs Darley, Breeders' Cup, HISA; March 24: Wagering in the World–fundamentals and variations in betting systems; March 31: Where does the Money come from?–the funding of horseracing. Click here for the complete schedule. The post Fly High In Lexington And See The Bigger Picture appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

In recent years, trainer Bob Baffert has shown an affinity for the GII Los Alamitos Futurity, winning five of 11 editions since the race was moved to Los Alamitos. On Saturday, the Hall of Fame trainer will attempt to add another notch to his belt with a trio of entrants–Litmus Test (Nyquist), Provenance (Into Mischief) and Blacksmith (Liam's Map). Owned by SF Racing LLC, Starlight Racing, Madaket Stables, Stonestreet Stables, Diane Bashor, Determined Stables, Golconda Stable, Waves Edge Capital LLC and Catherine Donovan, Litmus Test will be making his first start since finishing fourth behind undefeated Ted Noffey in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Del Mar on Oct. 31. He previously finished third behind the likely juvenile champ in the GI Breeders' Futurity at Keeneland in October. Juan Hernandez lands on the 4-5 morning line favorite. Spendthrift homebred Provenance, who is out of multiple champion Monomoy Girl, was third behind subsequent GI American Pharoah Stakes winner Intrepido (Maximus Mischief)) in his career debut at Del Mar in August before graduating next out while cutting back to six panels at Santa Anita in September. Still a maiden, Wathnan Racing's Blacksmith debuted with a runner-up effort at Santa Anita on Oct. 25 and followed-up with a fifth-place effort at Del Mar on Nov. 22. Formerly the Hollywood Futurity and the CashCall Futurity, the race was first run at Los Alamitos in 2014. Baffert first won at the venue in 2015 with Mor Spirit (2015) and won the next four renewals with Mastery (2016), McKinzie (2017), Improbable (2018) and Thousand Words (2019). Offering the strongest candidate to best the Baffert triumvirate is the Chief Stipe O'Neill-trained Ackowledgemeplz (Bucchero), campaigned by Purple Rein Racing and Mark Davis. Runner-up in June behind another well-regarded Baffert trainee–Desert Gate–the Florida-bred returned on Oct. 25 to hand Blacksmith a 3/4-length defeat going 6 1/2 furlongs at Santa Anita. Armando Ayuso joins the fray here. Hronis Racing's Captivator (Charlatan) will attempt to step up in both class and distance here. Runner-up in a sales-restricted 6 1/2-furlong maiden optional claimer at Santa Anita in October, the John Sadler trainee ran off to an eye-catching 10 1/4-length score in a six-furlong test at Del Mar on Nov. 8. The front-running colt will get blinkers off while Hector Berrios returns to ride.   The post Baffert Offers Triumvirate in Los Alamitos Futurity appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article