Horse Racing This Weekend: Key Races, Top Horses & Best Bets [June 28-29]
Mystik Dan wins the Blame at Churchill Downs. (Photo by Coady Media)
June 28th, 2025
Jump to each section below for easy access to everything you need for horse racing this weekend!
Get ready for horse racing this weekend
Discover everything you need to know about horse racing this weekend, including top horses, best bets, tournaments, key races, and many great promotional bonus offers you just can't say no to.
Come back to find more weekly horse races and promotional offers every weekend.
.@AshleyAnd502 has the TwinSpires Weekend Windup, which starts with $2 MILLION Jackpot Pick-6 action TODAY at @ChurchillDowns! 💰 pic.twitter.com/2ldw7pw4Tk
— TwinSpires Racing 🏇 (@TwinSpires) June 27, 2025
Top horses and best bets for horse racing this weekend
The key horse races this weekend to focus your best bets on with top horses include the last weekend of Churchill Downs, including the Stephen Foster Stakes 2025. Other notable races can be found at Penn National Race Course and Woodbine.
In other big news this week, D. Wayne Lukas, long-time trainer and Hall of Fame member, has retired from horse racing and handed the reigns to Sebastian "Bas" Nicholl, his assistant trainer.
Also, this weekend TwinSpires presents a LIVE coverage event of Stephen Fosters Day 2025 with expert picks, LIVE odds, exclusive interviews, trackside coverage, race results and more. The LIVE blog is set to start at 3:30 PM and go through stakes racing for Saturday at Churchill Downs.
Click to jump to each race listed!
Best Bets for the 2025 Chicago Stakes
Read the full analysis here: How to bet With, and Against, Sierra Leone in the Stephen Foster Stakes
A fantastic field of seven of the top handicap horses in training will clash at Churchill Downs in Saturday’s $1 million Stephen Foster S. (G1). #4 Sierra Leone (5-2), one of four Grade 1 winners in the cast, has been installed as the morning-line choice in the star-studded group. But if your heart is not set on the favorite, here are some options for betting with and against favorite Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone – With
- $20 exacta 4 with 1,2 ($40)
Sierra Leone – Against
Top Horses for the 2025
#1 First Mission (4-1) this season and will give him a big chance third time off the break. Conditioned by Brad Cox, the five-year-old strode home a clear winner of the Oaklawn H. (G2) in his latest venture and has trained swiftly on this surface in the interim. Godolphin homebred is a Grade 2 winner on the oval and will improve upon his fourth-place result in the race in 2024, when he tired late as the 4-5 choice. He will be in the mix from the opening bell beneath Luis Saez.
#2 Mindframe (7-2) has performed especially well in each lifetime try to date and has a very high ceiling for Todd Pletcher. The lightly raced son of Constitution toppled a sensational field at seven-eighths here most recently, and the colt might move forward moving to two turns in his third appearance of the season, too. If the classic-placed Maryland-bred secures a good spot in the early stages of the tilt, then he will be right there late under the guidance of Irad Ortiz, Jr.
Join us for our LIVE coverage during Stephen Foster Day as we include all the major stakes races at Churchill Downs for this Horse Racing Weekend on Saturday! Our LIVE coverage will include Churchill Downs expert picks, LIVE odds, exclusive interviews, and other horse racing news. Discover the thrill of Churchill Downs starting at 3:30 PM ET through the Stephen Stakes at 6:03 PM ET.
The Jury: Expert Picks, Bets, and Fades for Churchill Downs' Stephen Foster Day card and closing weekend
The TwinSpires Jury of Ashley Anderson, James Scully, and Darin Zoccali debate their best bets and fades for Stephen Foster Day on Saturday at Churchill Downs and look at the closing day of the spring meet on Sunday.
Fort Washington wins the Dinner Party (Photo by Horsephotos.com)
Betting on Saturday’s All-Turf Pick 3 at Churchill Downs
A special $3 all-turf Pick 3 wager will be offered on both cards over the weekend at Churchill Downs, and the Saturday sequence is both challenging and exciting, with numerous excellent performers signed on for the grassy tilts.
Race 8 Wager
- $3 Pick 3: 3,5,6,8 with 7,8 with 1,9 ($48)
Zulu Kingdom winning the American Turf (G1) at Churchill Downs (Photo by Horsephotos.com)
A talented field of seven sophomores will travel one mile on the Penn National lawn in Friday’s $400,000 Penn Mile S. (G3) at Penn National Racecourse. The race will go through the once-beaten #7 Zulu Kingdom (7-5) for conditioner Chad Brown. By Ten Sovereigns, the bay was a debut winner overseas prior to arriving in the U. S. and has won four of his five stateside outings in advance of Friday.
Penn Mile Wagers
- $4 trifecta key 7 with 1,4,5 ($24)
- 50-cent trifecta box 1,4,5,7 ($12)
- 10-cent superfecta 4,5,7 with 1,4,5,7 with 1,4,5,7 with all ($9)
Woodbine (Photo by Michael Burns Photography)
Pick 4 of the Week: Woodbine Saturday
A total of five graded stakes events will be hosted by Woodbine on Saturday, with four of them comprising the Pick 4 of the Week to close out the huge card.
Race 7 Wager
40-cent Pick 4: 1,5 with 1,2,5 with 1,2,5,7,8 with 4,10,12 ($36)
Before the Winner’s Circle and Hall of Fame, D. Wayne Lukas Was a Boy with a Horse
His white Stetson cowboy hat was hard to miss on any given day at the races. Alongside his aviator sunglasses, that hat was part of the signature look of ‘the Coach,’ D. Wayne Lukas. A lifelong mentor, Lukas retained the nickname well past his days on the sidelines of a Wisconsin basketball court as he continued coaching young people on and off the racetrack.
Over the course of his long Hall of Fame career, Lukas built a reputation as one of the sport’s greatest trainers, with nearly 5,000 wins and a long list of champions, but how did this small-town boy become the Coach? The answer lies in Lukas’s earliest years as a boy, with an innate sense of how to get the best of an athlete, human or equine.
Timber Country, shown winning the 1994 Breeders' Cup Juvenile, is among the champions trained by D. Wayne Lukas (Photo by Horsephotos.com)
Five underappreciated champions trained by D. Wayne Lukas
As serious health issues have forced Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas into retirement at the age of 89, thoughts turn reflective about the inevitable passing of time in our own lives. The horses of our youth have become distant memories, some more indelible than others, but all tinged with the nostalgia of a bygone age.
Photo Essay: D. Wayne Lukas as coach, horseman, and hall of fame legend
As a coach, D. Wayne Lukas would share wisdom and insight with anyone, anywhere.
Whether in front of large crowds as an ambassador to the sport of horse racing, or to media scrums on the backside barn areas of racetracks across the United States. During the latter part of his career, Lukas would typically invite a randomly chosen child from the grandstand to join him in the winner’s circle after a victory for the winning photo. He would then purchase a winner’s circle photo for that child’s family. Despite his advancing age and still maintaining a vigorous training regimen and schedule, his enthusiasm for attracting new fans to the sport never dwindled.
Racing Roundtable: D. Wayne Lukas' retirement, Stephen Foster lookahead
This week, the Racing Roundtable of Vance Hanson, James Scully, and Ashley Anderson look back on the career of Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas upon the announcement of his retirement, examine the top performances from the weekend, and look ahead to the Stephen Foster Day card at Churchill Downs on closing weekend of the spring meet.
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