It's Post Time with JJ Graci

11/07/2022

Winchell Thoroughbreds' Grade 1 winner Epicenter is recovering following surgery Sunday to repair a lateral condylar fracture to his right front leg at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington.

11/06/2022

Flightline, who capped a brilliant unbeaten career with an 8 1⁄4-length victory in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, has been retired to Lane’s End Farm. He will stand as the property of a syndicate with a stud fee still to be announced.

11/06/2022

11/06/2022

Flightline came through at 2/5 odds and remained undefeated with a resounding triumph Saturday in the $6-million Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1) at Keeneland, cementing championship honors and a lofty place […]

09/27/2022

Kiaran McLaughlin will be presented with the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters' Bill Mooney Award for displaying courage in the face of tremendous adversity. McLaughlin, long a leading trainer, has battled multiple sclerosis for more than two decades. “I'm incredibly honored to receive this a...

09/20/2022

Cyberknife and Taiba, separated by a head in the Grade 1 Haskell at Monmouth Park, head a field of 11 3-year-olds entered Monday for Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Pennsylvania Derby at Parx.

09/16/2022

Churchill Downs Incorporated announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ellis Park Racing & Gaming in Henderson, Kentucky, from Enchantment Holdings, LLC, an affiliate of Laguna Development Corporation, for total consideration of $79 million in cash, subject to certain working ca...

09/15/2022

When Scott Haney and Dorothy Worton claimed Koko Star August 1, they were excited. Then it all went sideways, leaving them frustrated, and horseless.

09/13/2022

Former harness trainer Rick Dane has been sentenced to 30 months in prison over his role in the 2020 federal racehorse doping case

09/06/2022

People have been buzzing about Flightline's other-worldly performance in the Pacific Classic, as they have about all his previous races. Now it is time to see

09/06/2022

Article by Nicholas Godfrey: USA: After drawing comparisons with the legendary Secretariat for his extraordinary 19-length romp in Saturday’s Pacific Classic at Del Mar, Flightline has been awarded a Beyer speed figure of 126 – the second-highest in 31 years.

09/06/2022

NYRA concludes 2022 summer meet with record handle and robust attendance | The New York Racing Association

09/05/2022

Frankie Dettori and Torquator Tasso were narrowly denied in their quest to land the 152nd Wettstar Grosser Preis von Baden – with the evergreen Italian also han

09/04/2022

While retaining announcing duties at Belmont Park, John Imbriale will retire as the full-time announcer at the New York Racing Association at the end of 2022, the organization announced Sunday. Frank Mirahmadi will take over the race calling duties at Saratoga Race Course and Chris Griffin will beco...

09/02/2022

Penny Pearce has been handed six years' worth of suspensions and over $23,000 in fines after her horses tested positive for clenbuterol.

09/01/2022

SARATOGA SPRINGS – The 2-year-old Thoroughbred – a baby, really, a rookie – won the first start of his career on Aug. 19 at Saratoga Race Course, and a member of the media asked the owner about the c**t’s name. The owner smiled a familiar smile, and there was also a telltale gruff needling t...

09/01/2022

Leading trainer Chad Brown, who was arrested Aug. 17 and was charged with criminal obstruction of breathing, has had his court appearance adjourned two weeks to Friday, Sept. 16. The Blood-Horse was first to report the news. Brown was released the morning of Aug. 18 on cash bail of $2,500 and was or...

08/30/2022

McAnally will be honored this weekend with the prestigious Pincay Award, bestowed annually to an individual who has served horse racing with “integrity, extraordinary dedication, determination and distinction.”

08/29/2022

Trainer Eric Reed said his 3-year-old c**t Rich Strike ran a good race in the Travers Stakes at Saratoga. His fourth-place effort helped validate his Kentucky Derby, when he shocked everyone by winning at odds of 80-1.

08/24/2022

Winchell Thoroughbreds' MGSW and GI Kentucky Derby and GI Preakness S. runner-up Epicenter (Not This Time) drew post six in a field of eight and was installed as a significant 7-5 favorite in Saturday's 153rd renewal of the $1.25 million GI Runhappy Travers S. The Steve Asmussen pupil, last seen pro...

08/24/2022

Attorneys for the connections of Medina Spirit tried to establish that Kentucky rules are unclear on betamethasone as an appeal hearing of the horse's Kentucky Derby (G1) disqualification continued Aug. 23 in Frankfort, Ky.

08/22/2022

Baffert goes to Kentucky commission to erase suspension he served this year.

08/20/2022

Either trainer Burton Sipp is an unwitting pariah, or racing is his witting fool. Over the last 40 years, Sipp has faced allegations involving insurance scams and dead horses, animal neglect cases, race-fixing stings and regulatory malfeasance. Not all the accusations against him have stuck. Since t...

08/19/2022

Chad Brown returns to training at Saratoga after his assault arrest.

08/19/2022

Claiming that the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) has “destroyed” his reputation as a trainer by issuing a 47-count complaint pertaining to the alleged race-day administration of substances to his horses and then purportedly violating his rights to due process when he tried to resolve the c...

08/18/2022

Chad Brown, known as an accomplished horse trainer, has been arrested on charges, according to Saratoga Springs Police.

08/16/2022

This is an original 1941 photo of jockey Billy Pearson before his serious accident at Hollywood Park.

He was born in Chicago in 1920, but was raised in Los Angeles by his single mother, Ann, a nurse who worked the night shift. But it was his grandfather who helped Pearson after he was kicked out of high school and did a stint at a reform school by giving him a contact at a local stable.

Pearson began his riding career exercising horses for movie mogul Harry Warner. By 1941, he was riding alongside the top jockeys in the game and was ranked 27th in the country. But Pearson’s career took a dramatic turn one day at Hollywood Park when he was knocked out of his saddle and trapped beneath five horses. He lay in the hospital for nearly six months with a shattered collarbone, shoulder and a broken leg.

During his long convalescence, he began reading some books on antiques that he had purchased years earlier and began his transition from jockey to art connoisseur and dealer. After he left the hospital, Pearson was asked to evaluate a horse owned by Millard Sheets, a painter who had once shared a studio with Henri Matisse. Sheets, in turn, introduced Pearson to Earl Stendhal, an important dealer in Pre-Columbian Art.

Stendhal introduced Pearson to many influential art collectors, among them John Huston whose large art collection had allegedly been enhanced by objects he had smuggled out of Mexico during the filming of The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

While Pearson continued to ride, he began to use his winnings to pay front men to comb areas of Mexico for art objects. Pearson won more than 300 races up and down the West Coast between 1949 and 1954, earning him almost $1.3 million. He piloted Blue Reading to victory in the 1951 Bing Crosby Handicap, the 1951 Del Mar Handicap and the 1954 Santa Catalina Stakes. Inspite of these successes, his passion for art was taking him away from the world of racing.

He became so knowledgeable on art that he went on to win over $170,000 on two television quiz shows: The $64,000 Question and The $64,000 Challenge which aired in 1956 and 1957 respectively. These shows would have a number of contestants who had what were considered to be unusual interests and a jockey who was also an art expert greatly intrigued the public. Billy Pearson with his extensive art knowledge, charisma and sharp wit was an overnight sensation.

His quiz show appearances would lead to Pearson appearing as a jockey in a Perry Mason episode entitled The Case of the Jilted Jockey and being cast in several small film roles throughout the next twenty years. In 1958, he was cast as private eye Donald Lam in a television pilot called Cool and Lam, which was based on the books by Earle Stanley Gardner writing under his pseudonym of A. A. Fair.

He wrote an autobiography entitled Never Look Back in 1958 which detailed his life up until his first quiz show win. Pearson dedicated the book to the Internal Revenue Service who he wrote, "had watched over me closer than my mother (and) knew me better than my wife."

Billy Pearson: professional jockey - daredeveil, high school dropout, reform school graduate - who soaked up everything he could learn about art in his spare time between horse races until he became one of the foremost art historians and collectors in the world died on Thanksgiving Day 2002 of pneumonia.