Del Mar and Santa Anita intend to run four days a week during their fall meetings even though the population of Thoroughbreds in Southern California has declined by approximately 24 percent in the last year, racing and track officials said at Saturday’s annual meeting of the Thoroughbred Owners of California.
Sunland Park in New Mexico plans to donate a total of $100,000 to two foundations assisting families following the mass shooting in neighboring El Paso, Texas, the track announced late Friday.
The Drug Testing and Standards Committee of the Association of Racing Commissioners International has approved recommendations that would ban the administration of a class of painkilling drugs within 48 hours of a race and the administration of anti-inflammatory drugs known as corticosteroids within 14 days of a race.
Santa Anita will not run races on its hillside turf course at the autumn meeting, which begins on Sept. 27, and will run turf sprints at 5 and 5 1/2 furlongs during the six-week season.
Despite losing a Saturday card due to heat and the majority of another card due to rain, all-sources handle for the first half of the 2019 Saratoga meet is up over the first half of last year’s meet, according to figures provided by the New York Racing Association on Thursday.
Steve Koch, the executive director of a racing-industry safety and welfare accreditation program, has accepted a position with The Stronach Group as a senior vice president of racing, the company announced on Thursday.
Jockey Mickey Walls and trainer Josie Carroll were among the 2019 inductees into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame during a ceremony at the Mississauga Convention Center on Wednesday night.
The $50,000 Robert Dupret Derby at Santa Rosa did not attract enough horses to be run as scheduled on Saturday and has been rescheduled for Sunday.
With the disqualification of Maximum Security from first place in this year’s Kentucky Derby still fresh in the industry’s mind, issues surrounding the criteria currently used by North American stewards for disqualifications was the subject of two presentations on Tuesday afternoon at the Saratoga Institute on Equine, Racing, and Gaming Law conference, with both officials arguing urgently for change, if from different angles.
New York’s five remaining off-track betting corporations can survive as legitimate racing outlets but only if the state continues to remove restrictions on their business practices and the corporations cooperate more fully with each other and with the state’s dominant racetrack operator, speakers at the annual Saratoga Institute on Equine, Racing, and Gaming Law said on Tuesday.
