Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem Nov. 12, 2026

A good Thursday morning to you all! It’s Claiming Crown weekend at Churchill Downs and the card turned out really well. We had a Claiming Crown preview day at Colonial in August and it’s cool to see many of the runners who ran well in those races come back this weekend. A funny part of Claiming Crown is that many of the participants aren’t actually regular claiming runners any more, but they were at one time and that gets them eligible! Overall, I think it’s one of the cooler and more unique days of the year in racing. 

Claiming races and horses are easily the most underrated and underappreciated part of our game. If you ask any racing fan to name their favorite horse of the last decade, there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to name a superstar of some sort. Just as if you ask someone their favorite baseball player it’s more likely to be Shohei Ohtani or Bryce Harper than it is a random utility player for the Detroit Tigers. It’s just the way it is, the stars get more attention. 

But almost every claiming horse is someone's favorite horse. The first horse I ever claimed was named Global Arena and we got him for $3,200 out of a maiden win at Portland Meadows in late 2004. He failed to hit the board in the next few starts and we ended up selling him at the end of the meet for $1,500 to a trainer who was going to run him on the Oregon fair circuit. He ran for a couple more seasons before winding down his career in 2006. But from the time we decided to claim him, to the day we bought him, and the few months we raced him, I was obsessed with this horse. I went and watched his replays, studied his past performances, analyzed his races like never before. I went and saw him in the mornings and talked to the trainer all the time about his workouts and preparation. It was wildly fun, even though he never did much running in the afternoons after we claimed him. 

I always try to remember when announcing races that for the bettors and the people who campaign the horses, every race can be the biggest race of their year. At any level. The nerves leading up to a race as an owner were always greater than for calling races. The number of times I’ve seen friends or acquaintances in the game moved to tears because of their horse's performance is too many to count. 

A few years ago at Churchill Downs I ran into a friend who owned a horse running there. They’d had her for more than a year and after she got claimed that afternoon, my friend was in tears. He was worried about having to tell his kids they no longer owned the horse, but he told me he also felt appreciative for the experiences the horse provided them. He kept apologizing for being so emotional, but it was truly one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen at the track. 

Most of our claiming horses have these amazing stories and most of them also have careers that span several years, several conditions, several tracks, and have a real arc to them. If you’re betting races this weekend, there’s a good chance a majority of them will be of the claiming variety and they pose a wonderful handicapping challenge.  

Enjoy Claiming Crown and the weekend and make some money out there!