Preakness Winner!

The Preakness Stakes took place earlier today at Pimlico Race Course, and the performance was almost the same as the Kentucky Derby. I’ll Have Another came from behind and won by a head, just in front of Bodemeister.

(photo Mike Stewart/AP)

With wins at the Derby and Preakness, I’ll Have Another has a real chance of winning the Triple Crown! The final race of the three is the Belmont Stakes – with takes place June 9. The last Triple Crown winner was Affirmed in 1978.

Do you think we will have a Triple Crown winner this year?

Kentucky Derby Winner

I’ll Have Another has won the 138th Kentucky Derby! It was amazing to watch, he came from the pack in the final stretch and run very well. It was a first time win for post position number 19, and a first time derby win for his jockey. The horse is named for what his owner says when his wife offers him another cookie.

(found here)

Kentucky Derby 2012

Today is the 138th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs! It is warm today, around 84 degrees, and dispite rain yesterday the track has dried and been rated as fast. Only for three year old horses, these athletes have only one chance in their lives to win this race. These two minutes mean a lot in the horse racing world!

While there are many promising horses the current favorite is Union Rags, who starts in the fourth spot:

(found here)

Union Rags’ owner has a wonderful story – she sold him as a colt and repurchased him for much more than he was original sold for when he went to auction. He has turned out to be a champion so far, will he be able to pull off a big win?

There are a couple others horses that I want to highlight before the race.

Hansen – a beautiful all white horse that is drawing a lot of attention to himself.  A bit of controversy surrounds his owner Dr. Hansen who has used the horse to seemingly bring himself publicity. He wanted to dye part of Hansen’s tail blue for the last race he ran, even with threats to scratch the animal over the issue. The tail was dyed back by the trainer to prevent any problems at the anger of Dr. Hansen – Hansen placed second in that race.  He has done well thus far, can he pull off a win today?

(found here)

Bodemeister – Has a lot of potential to win this race by the very nature of his speed. He won the Arkansas Derby by 9 1/2 lengths. However, he has not been raced that many times (never as a two year old) and new situations could come up that will startle him and impact his performance. Maybe he can pull off such a wonderful win today.

(found here)

Gemologist – So far undefeated, and the only horse in the field to be so, Gemologist has great potential and good odds to take the Derby.

(found here)

Take Charge Indy – He has won in a couple major races but has not gotten much publicity like other derby favorites. However, he will have three time derby winning jockey Calvin Borel – so only time will tell if this combination will take it all today.

(found here)

Creative Cause – Has had good winnings thus far and I think he is a beautiful animal:

Another horse that I like just for the name: Rousing Sermon

(found here)

Creative, and I am not sure that many people would name a horse something like this. So I am interested in seeing how he runs. Also great names: I’ll Have Another and Daddy Long Legs.

Google Doodle

Have you seen today’s Google Doodle (the picture on the front page of Google featuring their name)?

It features Eadweard J. Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion. If you click the picture on Google you can see the horse running. Below is how the actual set of pictures looked that make up the moving image:

Eadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer who used multiple cameras to take pictures of animals and people in motion, and then project them as moving pictures before film with a zoopraxiscope. His work helped to better understand how people and animals move.

The Horse in Motion was created to settle a common question of the day scientifically: were all four of a horses hooves on or off the ground while at a trot? Art leading up to this point in history often featured the horse at a trot with all legs off the ground, the front legs out in front off the ground and the back legs out behind the horse and off the ground. He set up a series of cameras to take pictures as the horse trotted past. It took only a single picture to actually solve the debate: a horse does have all four hooves off the ground at once, when all legs are tucked up under the animal while switching between pulling forward with the front legs and pushing forward with the back legs, not as artists had depicted.

Here are a couple more examples of movement photography by Muybridge:

Horse Jumping

 

Buffalo Running

(Animal Locomotion, Plate 700, 1887)

Ostrich

(found here)

Preakness Stakes

I have been very busy, so sorry for not posting much recently.

Saturday was the 136th Preakness Stakes! Unfortunately, Animal Kingdom lost so there will not be a triple crown this year. He was rather untested though, having run only 4 races before entering the Kentucky Derby and having never raced on dirt before. Had he run more races then maybe it would have been understood how much time he needed to make up for how far behind he was.

Shackleford was the winner!

The Belmont Stakes is still to come!

Kentucky Derby 2011

Do not forget to watch the 2011 Kentucky Derby today!

I will update the post with the winner and pictures after the race!

To see more now, visit kentuckyderby.com.

Quick Update:

And the winner is Animal Kingdom!

Animal Kingdom was not a favorite to win with 20-1 odds.

Second place was Nehro, and third was Mucho Macho Man.

Archarcharch also suffered a fracture during the race, but it is not life threatening.

Animal Puppets

I posted an entry a long time ago about the play War Horse, which features amazing, life sized and life-like horse puppets. This makers of the puppets, Handspring Puppet Company, featured their abilities to make life like puppets at the TED conference this year. I have included an explanation of TED below the content of this story.

War Horse horse puppets

Here is the video from TED featuring and explaining their awesome animal puppets, it is however 18 minutes long:

I would suggest that you watch the whole thing because how they make and move the puppets is truly amazing, but if you do not have that kind of time below are two shorter videos showing what the company can do.

A quicker demonstration of the horse puppet (only 2:48):

Demonstration of working a giraffe puppet:

Here is the full puppet:

——————————————————

What is TED? It is a nonprofit organization which conducts an annual conference where the ideas currently at work and those of the future can be presented to investors and the public. These ideas cover all areas, from art to technology and beyond, and are meant to try and make the world a better place. The presentations are all available on their website TED.com. My husband introduced me to the TED conference this year after going to watch some of the presentations from the live webstream of the conference. I decided to post this because something that I was interested in the past actually came up at TED, and I encourage you to check out their website for ideas

World’s Smallest Stallion

Meet Einstein, the world’s smallest stallion:

Here he is pictured next to a horse of normal size.

Einstein lives on a farm in New Hampshire, he was purchased from well known mini horse breeder Judy Smith. Most miniature horses are 18 pounds at birth. Einstein is the smallest foal to survive. He has no dwarf characteristics, so he is just a small version of a large horse.

Here you can see a video of him as a newborn and going outside for the first time:

To read more see the Daily Mail