Aqueduct notes: Noble Moon has shot to make Gotham

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Noble Moon, the Jerome Stakes winner who missed three weeks of training due to a foot injury, returned to the track on Thursday and could still make the Grade 3, $500,000 Gotham Stakes here on March 1.

“If everything goes without a hitch, yeah, it’s a possibility,” trainer Leah Gyarmati said Friday.

Noble Moon, a son of Malibu Moon, won the Jerome on Jan. 4 by two lengths. He is 2 for 3 with his lone loss coming in the Grade 3 Nashua Stakes, where, after a troubled break, he rallied to finished third behind Cairo Prince, recent winner of the Holy Bull Stakes.

Despite Noble Moon having been out of training for three weeks, Gyarmati said, “I don’t think he lost anything,” from a fitness perspective.
Gyarmati was represented in Saturday’s Withers Stakes with Street Gent, and on Friday she won a first-level New York-bred allowance race for 3-year-olds with Deceived.

NYRA restructures departments

Jerry Davis, the director of admissions and parking for the New York Racing Association for the last 19 years, has been let go as part of a consolidation of departments, according to association officials.

Parking will now fall under the purview of the guest services department, headed by Stephen Travers, and admissions will fall under the sales department umbrella, which will also include group sales, boxed seats, and reserved seats. That will all come under a new sales department, according to Eric Wing, NYRA’s director of media relations.

NYRA is seeking a sales director to head that department. In the interim, Patricia Calkins, who has worked as a business analyst in NYRA’s corporate development since last August, will be acting sales director.

“We’re trying to make the whole sales process more efficient and user friendly,” Wing said. “Unfortunately, as a result of the restructuring Jerry Davis’s position was eliminated, so he’ll be leaving the company.”

Davis was hired by NYRA in 1995 after working 13 years for AmTote as a computer programmer in that company’s auxiliary products division.

◗ Trainer Enrique Arroyo was to begin serving a seven-day suspension on Saturday after one of his horses came up positive for Bute, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that is not permitted to be in a horse’s system on race day.

The horse in question, High Inflation, who finished third in the fourth race at Aqueduct last Dec. 1, was disqualified from any purse money and ruled unplaced. The suspension was originally for 15 days but was reduced because Arroyo waived his right of appeal. Arroyo was also fined $1,000.