In their first meeting at the Woodward, Damascus put a quick end to all speculation about whether he was a better—or at least sounder—horse than Ogden Phipps’s four-year-old Buckpasser ...

Successor nipped him two years ago in the Champagne Stakes. Damascus, Horse of the Year in 1967, beat him twice — with the aid of a “rabbit” (pacesetter) named Hedevar. In their two other ...

In return, Putin was presented with a Damascus steel sword. As the Kremlin’s press-service has said, the horse called Khadjibek (year of birth 2012) was the breed’s world champion in 2015 ...