With the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes in the books, horse racing's attention shifts to the June 11 Belmont Stakes.
Expected to run in the 1 1/2 -mile race in New York are Preakness Stakes winner Afleet Alex and Kentucky Derby winner Giacomo.

On Wednesday morning in his first timed workout since the Preakness, Afleet Alex breezed five furlongs in 1:01.60 at Pimlico Race Course under regular rider Jeremy Rose.

There can be little doubt that Motivator is a worthy favourite for the Vodafone Derby at Epsom and he is the one to beat.
However, whether he deserves to be priced up as short as the general 5-2 on offer is open to question, and I believe that he is worth taking on with Irish raider Fracas, who is available at a top-priced 12-1.
After Motivator landed the Dante Stakes at York on May 12, his trainer Michael Bell conceded that his charge was ‘quite highly strung’.

Before the horses take off running at this month's Belmont Stakes, EchoStar Communications hopes its new onscreen betting system will have viewers champing at the bit.
For the first time, Dish Network subscribers will be able to wager on horse races from their couches using only their remote controls. "It's the most TiVo -proof content on television," says Ryan O'Hara, president of TVG, the horse-racing network that broadcasts events and handles viewers' bets.

After a tiring week of speculating in stocks, what better way to unwind over the weekend than to trot along to the lush green environs of the local racecourse and punt on the horse races?
The first thing to do is to buy a copy of the racing programme for the day, easily available outside the race course.
The form book contains details about the races, the names of the horses in each race, their ages, their pedigree, the handicaps, the jockeys, trainers and owners, the races that qualify for the jackpot and so on.

Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, who earned his first Kentucky Derby victory aboard 50-1 shot Giacomo, now has his eye focused on the Preakness, the second jewel of the Triple Crown.

This week Smith shares his thoughts with Post readers. As told to Steve Serby.

THE 13 post was not what I wanted, but you can win from there.

The fact that no horse has won the Preakness from there?

Six times in the past eight years, the Kentucky Derby winner rolled through Pimlico Race Course quickly enough to capture the Preakness Stakes and to resurrect talk of one of the most elusive and magical feats in sports: sweeping the Triple Crown. But Silver Charm, Real Quiet, Charismatic, War Emblem, Funny Cide and Smarty Jones were all denied the prize in the final leg, the Belmont Stakes.

Now is it Giacomo's turn to become the first Triple Crown champion since Affirmed in 1978?

On Saturday, Marsha LaForest asked her fiance to change the bet that he was placing for her on the Kentucky Derby.
He refused. "I told her, 'That's bad luck,'" Gerald J. Gregoire Jr. recalled. "You have to go with your best hunch."
That sound advice will pay for the Cohoes, N.Y., couple's August wedding - plus a down payment for a home - after their $1 trifecta bet on the Derby earned them a cool $62,500.
LaForest nailed the highest-paying trifecta in the Kentucky Derby's 131-year history.

George Steinbrenner's Bellamy Road has developed a minor injury that will keep him out of the Preakness Stakes and possibly the Belmont Stakes, Edward Sexton, who runs Steinbrenner's Kinsman Farm in Ocala, Fla., said.
After Bellamy Road's seventh-place finish as the 5-2 favorite in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, it was discovered that he had popped a splint in his left front leg, a racing term for inflammation of the tissue that overlies the splint bone, a small bone between the ankle and the knee.

After an intensive search for a partner to develop casino´s projects, SX Networks finally find in MediaGambling Networks the perfect complement that they were looking for.
The skills required for the new partner were the following: the Company should have a strong presence at the Internet to support SX Networks’ sites promotion and it should be capable and disposed to work among them in the future projects.

Visa, sponsor of the Triple Crown series since 1996, will sponsor the Kentucky Derby beginning in 2006, according to a press release from the company and Churchill Downs Inc. Terms of the five-year sponsorship agreement were not disclosed.
"Visa USA has been an important partner for U.S. horse racing, and we welcome Visa in its new role as sponsor for our company's marquee race, the Kentucky Derby," Churchill Downs Inc. CEO Thomas H. Meeker said in a news release.