TDN Podcast

Tyler Gaffalione joined this week's TDN Writers' Room following his win aboard Santin in the GI Arlington Million S.

In this instance, you really can't say that the grass is any greener on the other side of the fence. Take your dystopian pick: the floods of Kentucky, or the desiccation of Europe, where I've just returned from a vacation that seamlessly united the city parks of England and Italy in the same wasteland, with just a few bleached spikes still protruding from the baked, ashen earth.

Dr. Ernest Bailey shares the science behind the importance of diversity in equine genetics on this week's TDN Writers' Room. Plus the writers recap the GI Whitney S. and preview an exciting upcoming weekend of racing.

Barry “The Sniper” Spears, a successful handicapping tournament player, public handicapper, podcast host and influential voice in the world of horse racing Twitter, joined the latest episode of Bettor Things with Joe Bianca this week for a wide-ranging conversation on topics inside the sport and out. Later in the show, following up a profitable first week of his handicapping segment sponsored by the Breeders' Cup in which he gave out $17.60 Haskell winner Cyberknife (Gun Runner), Bianca lays out his plays for Saturday's GI Whitney S. at Saratoga, a star-studded Win and You're In qualifier for the GI Breeders' Cup Classic.

NYRA President and CEO Dave O'Rourke joined this week's TDN Writers' Room to discuss an exciting upcoming weekend of racing in Saratoga and the recent announcement that the 2022 Belmont Fall Meet will be held at Aqueduct Racetrack.

Polite but perfunctory. That was pretty much the tone in which people tended to praise Kitten's Joy while he was with us, and I guess it should be no different now that he's gone. Even so, it strikes me that his loss has been inadequately lamented. Not just in his own right, as an avowed turf stallion who freakishly contrived two general sires' championships in North America; but also, virtually unremarked, as a final straw in what has over the past nine months become an outright catastrophe for the enlightened minority persevering with grass breeding in Kentucky.

Brad Cox joined this week's TDN Writers' Room to recap Cyberknife's victory in the GI Haskell and discuss his graded stakes entries for this weekend.

Michael Beychock, the 2012 National Handicapping Championship winner, has made plenty of headlines this year. A well-known, outspoken horseplayer, Beychok joined the latest episode of Bettor Things with Joe Bianca this week to talk about his class-action suit against Bob Baffert surrounding the since-vacated 2021 Kentucky Derby victory of Medina Spirit, his vow to move his handle to sports betting in response to drug issues in racing, the approach to tournament play that helped him win the NHC, his day job as a political consultant and more.

Also this week, Bettor Things welcomed its first sponsor in the Breeders' Cup. To kick off a handicapping series that will precede each of the six nationally-televised Breeders' Cup Win and You're In programs leading up the World Championships Nov. 4-5 at Keeneland, Bianca broke down all angles of this week's GI TVG.com Haskell invitational S. at Monmouth Park, a qualifier for the GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic. Though the bulk of the wagering money will be on big names Jack Christopher (Munnings) and Taiba (Gun Runner), Bianca is taking a shot against the favorites and also threw in an all-stakes Pick 4 play for Saturday at the Jersey Shore oval.

With the first week of the 2022 Saratoga meet in the books, NYRA and Fox Sports TV analyst Andy Serling joined the TDN Writers' Room Tuesday as the to talk about how Saratoga somehow continues to exceed its sky-high expectations.

He's a rebel with a Causeway. But he is a rebel, all the same; or a maverick, at least; an outlier. Certainly we can't expect everyone to train horses like Kenny McPeek, nor indeed to buy them the same way. Apart from anything else, most people simply wouldn't be good enough.