The mutuel field, the 24th or “all others” option, closed Sunday as the 5-2 favorite over divisional champion Classic Empire (5-1) in Pool 2 of the 2017 Kentucky Derby Future Wager.
The winner of the $250,000 Albuquerque Fall Quarter Horse Championship this year will receive an automatic berth to the $600,000 Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos on Dec. 16, a first for the New Mexico race that was launched in 2015.
A California court of appeals on Jan. 26 overturned a 2014 California Horse Racing Board ruling suspending Quarter Horse trainer Jose De La Torre 38 months and fining him $160,000 for four clenbuterol positives at Los Alamitos in 2013.
Total handle on the $12 million Pegasus World Cup on Saturday at Gulfstream Park in Florida was $15.68 million when including all multi-race wagers that ended with this race, according to Equibase's official chart.
Bourbon Empire on Friday was announced as an early nominee to the Triple Crown, bringing to 419 the number of nominees at this stage of the process.
Handle at all California racetracks rose by slightly more than 2 percent in 2016, surpassing $3 billion, according to a report announced at Thursday's California Horse Racing Board meeting.
Rene Araya, a multiple stakes-winning trainer on the New York Racing Association circuit, died Thursday in south Florida from complications associated with kidney failure. He was 73.
The Illinois Racing Board, with eight yes votes and one member voting “present,” certified the annual recapture allocation to the state’s racetracks during a regular meeting Tuesday in Chicago. About $11 million earned for purse accounts during 2016 at Illinois tracks was “recaptured” by track operators, while the Tuesday meeting, somewhat ironically, also brought about further discussion of a plan for the IRB itself to help fund purses this year.
Churchill Downs Incorporated on Tuesday named Douglas Shipley as the new president and general manager of Fair Grounds.
Two horses at Turfway Park and one at Keeneland from quarantined barns tested positive for the wild-type strain of the equine herpesvirus.
