Heath Reed, a leading Quarter Horse trainer, has been suspended 21 years by the New Mexico Racing Commission because of four positives for the banned painkiller dermorphin and two positives for the anabolic steroid stanozolol.
A committee of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission tabled votes on the 2013 dates requests for three tracks on Monday after the tracks submitted schedules that included several overlaps, including a request by Churchill Downs to run on four weekends in September in conflict with Turfway Park.
ELMONT, N.Y. − While willing to abide by many of the recommendations made by a government appointed task force charged with promoting equine safety, horsemen on the backstretch at New York Racing Association tracks wondered if they would truly prevent horses from breaking down in the future.
On Friday, following five months of research, the New York Task Force on Racehorse Health and Safety issued a laundry list of recommendations in the wake of 21 horses suffering fatalities during Aqueduct’s winter meet.
The Louisiana Racing Commission conducted two days of hearings on Thursday and Friday to hear the appeals of seven trainers who had been suspended after horses they trained tested positive for the potent painkiller dermorphin.
The hearings will likely determine whether the commission will apply additional penalties to the six-month suspensions doled out to the trainers by racetrack stewards. While stewards in Louisiana are limited to handing down a maximum of six months, the racing commission can approve penalties for up to five years.
The New York Racing Association and state regulators agreed to make substantial changes in veterinary and medication practices after the release Friday of a task force’s report that said some of the deaths of 21 horses during the Aqueduct inner-track meet last winter could have been prevented.
CHICAGO – The 2013 Illinois racing calendar will mirror this year’s, but the Illinois Racing Board shifted several hundred thousand dollars worth of simulcast host commissions from Arlington to Hawthorne during its annual racing dates award meeting on Tuesday in Chicago.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Anne Walker, a graduate of the Ontario Veterinary College, has been appointed as a member of the Ontario Racing Commission for a two-year term, effective Oct. 12.
The ORC announced the appointment in a news release late Monday afternoon.
Walker also is a practicing civil litigation lawyer and has owned, bred, and raced Thoroughbreds for many years.
Churchill Downs Inc. filed a federal lawsuit on Friday seeking to block the Texas Racing Commission from enforcing a prohibition on telephone and Internet betting by state residents on horse races, according to court filings.
Bill Thomason, president and chief executive officer of Keeneland Association, was named to the board of directors of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association during a meeting of the organization’s board Friday, the NTRA said Monday.
Thomason, Keeneland’s former chief financial officer, succeeded Nick Nicholson at the helm of Keeneland as of Sept. 1. Nicholson was formerly a board member of the NTRA as well as the association’s first chief operating officer when it was formed in the late 1990s.