Longtime racing partners Team Valor International and Gary Barber saw their English 2-year-old filly Belvoir Bay burst to the fore of her division with panache on Sunday at Santa Anita in the Blue Norther Stakes. Jockey Flavien Prat, returning from a severe back injury, did a masterful job settling the speedy import and cleverly made an early move curving off the final bend to open a clear advantage. ... More
Tuttipaesi may have added yet another extension to her racing career for Valor Ladies on December 12 when she soared to a fifth career stakes win in the $100,000 South Beach Stakes on the turf at Gulfstream Park. ... More
Chris Wittstruck, a columnist for the United States Trotting Association website, won Team Valor International's Stan Bergstein Writing Award on Thursday night in a presentation at the Fasig-Tipton sales pavilion in Lexington. Instead of accepting the $25,000 prize, Wittstruck asked Team Valor to donate it to a charity on his behalf. ... More
Barry Irwin on the shifting media world and its impact on American racing: "For the initial 150 years, organized horse racing, and breeding, and selling in America were chronicled by a free and vigorous press. In the last decade all that has changed." ... More
Pointing to an apparent lack of will and dwindling budgets from state racing commissions, harness track owner Jeff Gural called on his peers on the Thoroughbred side of American horse racing to take the initiative to combat the use of illicit drugs like he has done. ... More
Ben Nichols, senior manager of media for the World Anti-Doping Agency, addressed the specter of drugs in sports at the Stan Bergstein Writing Award presentation in Lexington Thursday even as his organization has been at the center of allegations of state-sponsored doping of Russian athletes that may have tainted the London Olympics. ... More
A spokesman for the World Anti-Doping Agency and perhaps the most vigilant racetrack operator in the U.S. on the issue of illegal drugs will be featured speakers at Team Valor International's Stan Bergstein Writing Award presentation on November 12 at the Fasig-Tipton sales pavilion in Lexington. ... More
Speechify, a Graded stakes winner for Team Valor, was involved in a terrible incident at Keeneland where he fell over a horse who went down in his path. He escaped with just a scratch on a knee, with an assist from a photographer who stepped in to help. ... More
Tuttipaesi rewarded the patience and perseverance of her Valor Ladies connections with a dominant stakes victory in the $75,000 Suffolk Downs Distaff Turf on October 3, more than two years since her career was sidetracked by injury and serious illness. ... More
Panama Hat capped his 4-year-old season in fine fashion tonight in Ireland by nailing down his first Group or Graded triumph in the Diamond Stakes at Dundalk. Jockey Chris Hayes gave him a perfect ride in a tricky predicament facing just two other horses. ... More
A state racing commission s unique layer of scrutiny uncovered a laboratory s surprising rate of failure in detecting prohibited drugs. What about testing elsewhere in the U.S where such a quality assurance program is not in place? . ... More
Team Valor International has bought the unbeaten Juno, who won her fifth race from as many outings last time out in her 3-year-old debut on September 7 in Brazil's Group 1 equivalent of the One Thousand Guineas. ... More
Panama Hat is a 6-time winner but his best performances have arguably come in 3 defeats, the latest case coming on Saturday in a stubborn second-place finish in the $350,000 American St. Leger on Arlington Million Day. ... More
From America s Best Racing comes the following about a fun part of Arlington Million day that is headed up by two members of the Team Valor staff: a fashion contest with a $500 grand prize and gift bags for each of 80 contestants. ... More
Team Valor International has nominated a story from the Racing Biz website on a Delaware medication case for the Stan Bergstein Writing Award. Doug McCoy s and Frank Vespe s piece Pletcher overage that wasn t has major implications for racing details a medication violation from last summer s Delaware Handicap that the state decided to drop. ... More
Team Valor International racing partners and Barry and Kathleen Irwin presented Mercedes Hernandez with the John R. Velazquez Scholarship on Saturday at Belmont Park. ... More
Triple Threat, a home-bred who won a pair of group races in France as a 3-year-old, revitalized his career at 5 on Sunday by winning the Grade 2 Monmouth Stakes in a thriller in his U.S. debut. ... More
Horses for a trainer in New York failed drug tests three times in 11 months, including one horse who tested positive two races in a row, but the trainer only incurred the same minimum penalty for each violation. This recent example is the centerpiece of a Blood-Horse story by Frank Angst that has been nominated for Team Valor International's Stan Bergstein Writing Award. ... More
Royal Pleasure, bred by a Team Valor partnership that sold her for peanuts and bought back after she won her racing debut impressively by 6 lengths, scored a well-earned victory Sunday when she took the Grade 3 Strelitzia Stakes by three-quarters of a length at Scottsville in South Africa. ... More
Spanish Romance, a French-based 2-year-old filly who won her 5-furlong Chantilly unveiling by 5 lengths to earn a sensational 98 Timeform rating, has joined Team Valor after passing an inspection this morning by Kentucky vet Dr. Gary Priest. ... More
Euro Charline will probably head back to the company of her own sex at Royal Ascot for her next start, a favorable proposition considering few fillies or mares in training could have fared as well as she did on March 30 with the task she faced in the Dubai Turf. ... More
Unrivaled toyed with his opponents and his new Team Valor partners on Sunday when he spotted the early leaders about 12 lengths in a Parx allowance race, only to fly home to an easy victory that put him in line for a major Kentucky Derby prep. ... More
Barry Irwin s journey to becoming the founder and owner of Team Valor International, a spectacularly successful racing syndicate that spans several continents... More
Two months after Team Valor returned Euro Charline to his care, trainer Marco Botti has given a green light for the Grade 1 Beverly D. Stakes winner to point for the $6-million Dubai Turf on World Cup night at Meydan. ... More
Team Valor International finished 2014 in hot fashion on the racetrack with 5 stakes wins and an overall win rate of 22 percent from July through December, a welcome return to the stable s normal standards after an uncharacteristic first half of the season. ... More
Jim Gribbins is a partner in eight Team Valor horses who combined for 12 wins in 2014, and his most valuable triumph came four days before the end of the year and on two fronts when Speechify prevailed in the Grade 3 Mr. Prospector Stakes at Gulfstream Park. ... More
