Last year, Mike Smith and Bob Baffert teamed up to win the Triple Crown. This year, they will be opponents.

The famed Santa Anita racetrack has adopted numerous safety measures in the last month. Was it enough?

Santa Anita enacted several changes to improve horse safety. It still only took two days for a horse to die.

The 22nd horse death at Santa Anita this season has prompted more changes at the California track.

There is clearly something very wrong at the Santa Anita racetrack, where 21 horses have died since Dec. 26.

Hall of Fame jockey Victor Espinoza, who was paralyzed after an incident that left his horse dead while training in July, rode again this weekend for the first time since the incident.

A drunk Kentucky man was arrested at the Breeders' Cup on Saturday after attempting to steal and ride a horse around the track.

Windsun Magnolia got her first career win in an unusual way.

Victor Espinoza details his recovery after his debilitating fall at Del Mar race track.

Rick Pitino has found competitive success on the horse racing scene, if not common sense. 

Legendary horse Justify has been retired more than a month after his Triple Crown victory.

Former American Pharoah jockey Victor Espinoza is in the hospital with a fractured vertebra after a horse he was riding went into sudden cardiac arrest.

Justify's racing future has been put on hold just one month after winning the Triple Crown due to a front left ankle injury.

Justify is a great horse and a legitimate Triple Crown winner, but it looks like he got help in the Belmont Stakes.

Only one trainer could have completed the rush order it took to get the late bloomer Justify ready for the Triple Crown.

Patriots tight end Rob Grokowski got a thrill watching Gronkowski the horse rally from last to challenge Justify at Saturday's Belmont Stakes.

The internet had plenty of praise and jokes for Triple Crown winner Justify after his wire-to-wire win at the Belmont Stakes.

Justify completed the Triple Crown quest by winning the Belmont Stakes, adding that to the Kentucky Derby and Preakness victories to become just the 13th horse in history to sweep those three races.

These are the five toughest Belmont defeats for Triple Crown aspirants.

How to take $100 and turn it into a small fortune betting on the 2018 Belmont Stakes.

There was a time when D. Wayne Lukas and Bob Baffert did not like each other. Today, the two most accomplished horse trainers in Triple Crown racing are friendly rivals.

An exercise rider gallops a thoroughbred around the track during a workout at Belmont Park, Tuesday, June 5, 2018, in Elmont, N.Y. Justify will attempt to become the 13th Triple Crown winner when he runs in the 150th running of the Belmont Stakes horse race on Saturday. Ninety-nine years ago, a horse named Sir Barton became the first winner of the Triple Crown. It was Sir Barton’s fourth win in a span of 32 days, with the first and second being the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes.

Justify — running for the Triple Crown — drew the rail for the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, and will race in the No. 1 post position. Check out the full draw for the 150th running of the Belmont Stakes.

Justify's run for the Triple Crown got easier when his toughest competition, Audible, was scratched from the Belmont Stakes.

Just one win shy of the Triple Crown, Justify's breeding rights have reportedly been sold ahead of the Belmont Stakes for more than $60 million.

Bob Baffert, the Hall of Fame horse trainer who led Justify to his Kentucky Derby win earlier this month, loves to listen to Post Malone. In fact, he does so daily.

Give us another $100 worth of wagers on the Preakness. It will be very hard to cash big tickets on the Preakness within the confines of a $100 bankroll. The favorite, undefeated Derby winner Justify, opens at odds of 1-2.

Trainers nationwide dream that one of those new arrivals eventually will become next year’s Kentucky Derby winner. The arrangement was temporary before moving Justify to one of WinStar’s A-list trainers.

A Texas woman won $1.2 million after placing an $18 bet on the Kentucky Derby on Saturday.

Bob Baffert stared at the TV screen on one side of Churchill Downs as the horses galloped around another side, navigating the far turn in a slanting rain that turned this Kentucky Derby into a quagmire. Baffert was watching the Derby in the horseman’s lounge just off the paddock, wearing a clear plastic poncho over his suit as the day-long deluge continued outside. In a race that left 19 horses and their riders covered in mud, jockey Mike Smith’s white WinStar Farm silks were pristine as he led Justify through a withering early pace and still had enough left in the stretch to beat Good Magic by 2½ lengths.

Take a look at the photo below, taken after the Kentucky Derby — the wettest in the 144-year history of the race. Just Justify, in the middle, warming down with jockey Mike Smith after winning the race by 2½ lengths. On a day when some three inches of rain fell, muddying Churchill Downs like never before, when jockeys wore multiple pairs of goggles to combat the mud, when afterward just about everyone else needed a hose shower a la Chris Farley in Tommy Boy, Justify and Mike Smith came home with barely a clump of dirt on them.

Pre-race favorite Justify justified the hype, running off with the roses in what is officially the wettest Kentucky Derby in the 144-year history of the race. In the process, the highly touted 3-year-old colt ridden by Mike Smith and trained by Bob Baffert ended a 136-year run since a horse won the Derby without having raced at age 2. The Preakness will be contested May 19, with the Belmont on tap for June 9.

There will be the usual pearl clutching in some journalistic corners over media members wagering on the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. Knowing this, the boss asked me to bless the readership with a foolproof plan for betting $100 on the Derby. The Derby has become more predictable in recent years — the favorite has won five straight, the longest such streak in the race’s 143-year history.

Inside this unadorned building is the last place you’d expect to find the owner of a Kentucky Derby horse three days before the race. “I’d rather be here than anywhere else,” says Ruis, owner and trainer of Bolt D’Oro, one of the prime contenders for Saturday’s 144th running of the Kentucky Derby. Ruis’ dark eyes sparkle as he watches 25 kids working on wrestling mats.

Bob Baffert is the man who came here with Justify, the Kentucky Derby pre-race favorite, a strapping beast being touted as a potential superhorse. Loosely applying the lyrics of one Irish powerhouse to another, it may finally be time for County Wexford native O’Brien and the Coolmore equine monolith to overthrow the status quo and stake their claim to the biggest prize in American horse racing. Mendelssohn, international horse of intrigue, will take the silks of the world’s biggest breeding and racing operation onto the Churchill Downs track Saturday and try to do what no European-trained animal has ever done: win the Kentucky Derby.

It was a call from Santa Anita Park clocker Gary Young on Feb. 13, and it was prophecy. Specifically, he had to tell Rogers, the Senior Director of Communications and Media Services at Churchill Downs. Young was phoning from California to tout a colt who had the potential to show up at Churchill in May as the star of the 144th Kentucky Derby.

Bolt d'Oro will race again this Saturday in the Santa Anita Derby.

Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming, Preakness Stakes winner Cloud Computing and Belmont Stakes winner Tapwrit will compete in the $1.25 million Travers Stakes on Saturday at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

In a stunner, Cloud Computing won the Preakness Stakes, spoiling Always Dreaming’s bid at a Triple Crown. The 142nd Preakness was billed as a head-to-head battle between Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming and Classic Empire, who was looking for revenge after a rough trip two weeks ago at Churchill Downs.

Amid the roaring catharsis that rippled through Belmont Park on June 6, 2015, one of the first people to reach Bob Baffert in the grandstand and congratulate him was Todd Pletcher. Baffert’s colt, American Pharoah, had just released thoroughbred racing from 37 years of waiting and wondering whether a Triple Crown could ever be won again. Pletcher, perhaps Baffert’s only legitimate rival in the training business, showed his respect that day.

Classic Empire looks to avenge a loss to Always Dreaming in the Kentucky Derby.

Todd Pletcher does not have a great track record in the Kentucky Derby. But winning his second run for the roses, with jockey John Velasquez on board, made this unforgettable for the trainer.

Less than two years after a terrible spill that left him broken and unable to race, Rajiv Maragh will ride one of the favorites at the Kentucky Derby.

Saturday's Kentucky Derby offers a unique opportunity to remember – and freshly appreciate – what might be the greatest losing effort in the history of a race that stretches back to 1875.

Lani's looneyness could be the X factor that throws a wrench in Nyquist's run for the Triple Crown.

The longtime trainer was in a violent car accident just hours after the Kentucky Derby. Now he's got a long-shot chance at the Preakness with Cherry Wine.

After running a near perfect Kentucky Derby, Nyquist is ready to make a run at the Triple Crown.

Mike Repole has always dreamt big. Saturday he could realize possibly the biggest dream of all: a Kentucky Derby victory.

The Kentucky Derby may have lost some of its appeal now that the 37-year Triple Crown drought has been broken.