Trainer Mark Casse, whose major victories include Triple Crown races in both the United States and Canada as well as at the Breeders’ Cup and Royal Ascot, and Wise Dan, a two-time Horse of the Year and six-time Eclipse Award winner, were announced on Wednesday by the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame as this year’s inductees from the contemporary ballot. There will be five others among the Hall of Fame induction class of 2020. Jockey Darrel McHargue and the 1870s racehorse Tom Bowling were chosen by the historic review committee, and three persons – Alice Headley Chandler and the late Keene Dangerfield Jr. and George Widener Jr. – were announced as Pillars of the Turf. All are scheduled to be inducted on Aug. 7 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where the Hall of Fame is located, but the annual ceremony, held at the Fasig-Tipton Sales pavilion, is in jeopardy owing to the coronavirus pandemic. In a release, the Hall of Fame it is “monitoring state and health regulations in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic and will be acting in accordance with those policies and best practices. “A decision on the status of the 2020 induction ceremony will be forthcoming,” the release said. Casse and Wise Dan were the only two of the 11 finalists on the contemporary ballot who garnered at least 50-percent support from the Hall of Fame’s 167 voters, who could select as many candidates as they wished. The nine who failed to make the cut were the horses Blind Luck, Game On Dude, Havre de Grace, Kona Gold, and Rags to Riches; trainers Christophe Clement, Doug O’Neill, and David Whiteley, and jockey Corey Nakatani. The Hall of Fame does not release vote totals. This was the final year Whiteley, who retired in 1995 and died in 2017, was eligible to be on the contemporary ballot. He now will fall under the purview of the historic review committee, which meets every two years and seems certain to honor one of the great trainers of his era. Casse, 59, adds the United States’s racing Hall of Fame to previous enshrinement in 2016 in the Canadian Racing Hall of Fame. Casse has been productive on both sides of the border. He has won Canada’s Sovereign Award as champion trainer 11 times and is a finalist for 2019, too. He has won seven Canadian Triple Crown races, including two runnings of the Queen’s Plate. Last year, Casse won his first United States Triple Crown races when War of Will captured the Preakness and Sir Winston the Belmont. Those wins added to a gaudy resume that already included five victories in Breeders’ Cup races, and the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot with Tepin, one of four Eclipse Award winners Casse has trained. Casse has won multiple training titles at Woodbine, Churchill Downs, Keeneland, and Turfway Park. Through Tuesday, he had won 2,865 races in North America, and his runners had earned $174,628,624, ninth all-time among trainers in North America. Wise Dan, one of the best racehorses of the previous decade, made the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. He raced from 2010 through 2014 and won 23 times in 31 starts, including 11 Grade 1 races, most notably consecutive runnings of the Breeders’ Cup Mile in 2012 and 2013. In both 2012 and 2013, he was Horse of the Year, champion older male, and champion male turf horse. :: Wise Dan career PPs Wise Dan won graded stakes races on turf, dirt, and synthetic. In addition to the Breeders’ Cup Mile, Wise Dan was a two-time winner of the Woodbine Mile, Shadwell Turf Mile, Woodford Reserve Turf Classic, and Makers’ 46 Mile, all Grade 1 races. He won the Grade 1 Clark on dirt in 2011. He also was a two-time winner of the Fourstardave and Firecracker. Morton Fink, who died in November, bred and owned Wise Dan, a gelding who was trained by Charlie LoPresti. Wise Dan resides on LoPresti’s farm in central Kentucky. McHargue, 65, rode from 1972 through 1988 and is best known for a brilliant 1978 campaign in which he won the Eclipse Award as champion jockey while setting what at the time was a single-season earnings record for a jockey of $6,188,353. He won the 1975 Preakness, and such other major races as the Apple Blossom, Blue Grass, Del Mar Debutante, Hollywood Derby, Hopeful, La Brea, Santa Anita Derby, Santa Anita Handicap, Santa Margarita, Strub, and Swaps. McHargue won three Grade 1 grass races aboard John Henry in 1980. He also rode in Europe in the early 1980s, his biggest wins coming in 1984 in the Sun Chariot at Newmarket and the Irish St. Leger at the Curragh. He won 2,553 races in North America. McHargue has been a steward since 1990, and the chief steward in California since 2015. Tom Bowling, by the prolific sire Lexington, won 14 of 17 starts racing from 1872 through 1874, including the Travers and Jersey Derby at age 3 and all four of his starts – twice at 2 1/2 miles -- at 4. He was bred and owned by H.P. McGrath and trained by Hall of Famer Ansel Williamson. Chandler, who founded Mill Ridge Farm after the death of her father, Hal Price Headley, has been a prominent breeder for more than half a century, beginning with 1968 Epsom Derby winner Sir Ivor. Others who have been raised at Mill Ridge include Kentucky Derby winner Giacomo, and Horses of the Year Havre de Grace and Point Given. Chandler, 94, has served as chairperson of the University of Kentucky’s Gluck Equine Research Foundation, president of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association, and as a director of the Breeders’ Cup, Keeneland Association, and the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association. Her many honors include the Eclipse Award of Merit, and Honored Guest of the Thoroughbred Club of America. Daingerfield, who died in 1993 at age 83, was the most-revered steward of his generation. A former trainer, Daingerfield became a steward in 1948 and was the chief steward in Illinois, New Jersey, and finally his home state of Kentucky, where he worked until his retirement in 1989. Daingerfield’s many awards and honors included the Eclipse Award of Merit, the William C. Coman Humanitarian Award from the Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, and the Joe Palmer Award from the National Turf Writers Association. He also was elected to The Jockey Club in 1989. Widener, from a famous racing family, was a prominent owner, breeder, and executive. He bred and raced champions Evening Out, High Fleet, Jaipur, Jamestown, Platter, Stefanita, and What a Treat, as well as Hall of Famer Eight Thirty, and owned champion Battlefield. He won the Travers a record-tying five times. Widener was elected to The Jockey Club in 1916 and was its chairman for 14 years. He also chaired the Greater New York Association (the forerunner to the New York Racing Association), served as president of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, and was a director of the TCA, which, as with Chandler, named him an Honored Guest at its annual dinner. He died in 1971 at age 82, and that year was named by the Hall of Fame as its first Exemplar of Racing, a status afforded only four others since.