Horses, riders okay after morning accident at Santa Anita

ARCADIA, Calif. - Three horses and their riders went down in a collision during training hours at Santa Anita on Wednesday morning, but, remarkably, none of the horses or their riders were injured in the ugly-looking incident.

The accident happened around 7:20 a.m. when an unraced filly trained by Richard Mandella who had been schooling at the gate at the six-furlong pole bolted into the path of a pair of horses trained by David Hofmans. The pair had just completed a workout and were galloping out around the clubhouse turn.

Taking the worst of it was jockey Iggy Puglisi, who, working one of the Hofmans runners, was catapulted to the main track and was removed in an ambulance.

“He’s okay,” Hofmans said later. “Just had the wind knocked out of him. That filly turned in, and my horse just ‘T’d’ into her.
Mandella said his filly was “bruised up, but seems all right.”

“She started to gallop, and then ducked in and they ran into each other,” Mandella said.

The track was closed for 25 minutes, during which time the surface also was renovated earlier than usual because of the delay.