Chris Scherf, the longtime head of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations who led the organization through successes, failures, and sporadic turmoil, will retire in October after 27 years as executive vice president of the racetrack trade group, the TRA announced Friday night after a board meeting in Saratoga Springs.
Horse racing may not appear to have much, if anything, in common with mixed martial arts. Still, an official with the sport's most prominent league will attempt to lay out its common ground with racing on Sunday as a guest of The Jockey Club at its Round Table Conference on Matters Pertaining to Racing in Saratoga Springs.
Racing lobbyists remain optimistic that the U.S. Treasury will revise how parimutuel winnings are treated for tax-reporting and withholding requirements, but they said the revisions remain a low priority for the agency because of larger issues within the complex U.S. tax code.
Wagering through Betfair's New Jersey-based exchange-wagering system that was launched early this summer has averaged approximately $150,000 a week in its first three months and appears to be declining on a weekly basis, according to figures provided this week by the New Jersey Racing Commission.
Racing’s two most prominent daily fantasy sites have shut off New York residents from winning cash in any of their contests, citing the recent approval of legislation in the state that contained language barring horse-racing fantasy contests despite explicitly authorizing the contests on nearly all other sports.
The organization that assigns grades to U.S. stakes races has decided that the time is right to begin reducing the number of graded races in the U.S., citing the sharp decline in the foal crop from 2007-12 and a comparable decline in the number of races held in recent years.
All-sources handle on racing at the New York Racing Association tracks was up 5.6 percent through the first six months of 2016 when compared with 2015. The catastrophic injury rate is down over that same time period. And the first third of the Saratoga meet is doing well.
A newly established crowd-funding group has begun soliciting interest from potential investors in a bid to buy a slot in the $12 million Pegasus World Cup, the owner-funded race scheduled for Jan. 28 at Gulfstream Park in Florida.
A panel at a law conference discussing the current state of the New York Racing Association franchise ended with a former official of the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo sharply criticizing his former boss’s policies toward the franchise.
The Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission has adopted regulations that will allow the commission to levy additional penalties against licensees who have racked up multiple violations of medication rules over a specified period of time.
