Trending In TDN Europe:

1). Video: Emma Berry chats to Nicolas de Chambure about City Light (Fr). The son of Siyouni (Fr) is new to Haras d'Etreham for 2020.

“He was second in the Diamond Jubilee at Ascot, beaten almost nothing by Merchant Navy. There were a lot of people trying to buy him at the time and we were lucky that the owners decided to keep him in France and, little by little, we managed to secure him.” - Nicolas de Chambure

2). Feature: Few have played the game with a truer Corinthian spirit or more successfully than Bertram and Diana Firestone, who have graced the upper echelons of the sport which they love for half a century. John Berry highlights their major successes in America and Europe.

“They are great horse-people. They understand horses, understand racing. They are people who are passionate about the horses themselves, and when people are passionate about the horses as individuals, then it makes it easy for everything to go well.” - Bill Mott

3). Feature: They say winning is more fun with friends, and that was certainly the case on Saturday for The Big Five Syndicate (Mick Flanagan, Tom Ryan, Craig Bernick, David Cox, Justin Casse, Ross Doyle and Anna Doyle). Mick Flanagan shares their story about Count Jack (SAf).

“Tom Ryan is in the partnership, and at the time I asked him to come in he said, ‘don’t spend more than $10,000.' Well, I ended up spending about $50,000 on the two horses. I gave him the bad news a few days later, but he was game and he’s had a blast as well.” - Mick Flanagan

Trending In TDN America

1). Video & Feature: Legends, to you and me. Immortals, paragons. But to Gus Koch, they were the flesh-and-blood companions of his daily toil. He worked with Natalma (USA) in Canada, her son Northern Dancer (Can) in Maryland, his son Nijinsky II (Can) at Claiborne. Chris McGrath finds out more.

“Everybody of course bred these great big mares to Northern Dancer, because he was so small. We had a little pit where we could mount him easily. He was a very good breeding horse. Tough. Didn’t like people. He was not vicious but you had to watch him.” - Gus Koch

2). News: A spike in foal deaths caused by nocardioform placentitis has been reported in Kentucky as the first month of the 2020 Thoroughbred foaling season comes to a close. T. D. Thornton examines further.

“Nocardioform placentitis is on our radar. It has been for a long time. We’re finishing a study right now looking at the genome-wide transcript of those kinds of tissues, basically looking at gene expression across the placentas of mares with those diseases compared to controls. We know a lot more about the inflammatory picture associated with it. But that hasn’t given us much in the way of clues about the etiology in terms of how this starts." - Dr. Barry Ball, a veterinarian with the University of Kentucky’s Gluck Equine Research Center

3). Video: Over his three-year career, the one-eyed Patch (USA) stole the hearts of fans across the country, and was a success on the track as well, finishing third in the G1 Belmont S. Now, the gelding has been retired to Old Friends Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, where friends can come see him. Katie Ritz caught up with Old Friends founder Michael Blowen to check in on Patch.

“The response has been unbelievable. He’s gotten thousands of likes on our Facebook page and we’ve received hundreds of comments from people already making plans to come out to the farm. I would guess that he will raise anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 a year for us, which is just huge." - Michael Blowen