Sprinter Sacre, the winner of nine consecutive steeplechases in England and Ireland until he was pulled up in his last start in December, will not start in the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham, England, on March 12, trainer Nicky Henderson told the Racing Post on Sunday.
Santa Anita received tentative approval from the California Horse Racing Board for its first-ever spring-summer meeting, to run from April 25 to June 29, but not before racing board members expressed concern about the track’s proposed stakes schedule and the absence of three historic races.
Two trainers based at Los Alamitos have been fined and suspended for clenbuterol positives from late 2013, and two others face the possibility of similar sanctions, according to rulings recently published by Los Alamitos stewards.
A coalition of animal-welfare groups opposed to greyhound racing launched a campaign in Florida on Wednesday seeking to push state legislators to support a bill that would end a requirement that casino licenses be issued only to operating racetracks.
The New York Racing Association continued to maintain Friday that there would be no blackout over the weekend of its signal on twinspires.com or other properties owned by Churchill Downs Inc., despite the lack of a simulcasting contract between the two parties.
Churchill Downs Inc. and the New York Racing Association remained in negotiations Wednesday over a simulcast contract for 2014, but a NYRA official said that the association did not anticipate a “signal disruption” when Aqueduct resumes racing Friday.
The Republican leadership of the Kentucky state Senate will not consider a bill to authorize casino gambling in the state unless the Democratic-controlled House passes a bill first, the Senate majority leader said after meeting with his Republican counterparts Monday night.
Churchill Downs Inc., the giant racetrack and casino company, has alleged in a lawsuit that it was bamboozled by a New Jersey real estate developer as the company pursued a deal to operate an internet gambling platform in the state.
Equine fatalities at California tracks dropped 24 percent in the 2012-13 fiscal year to its lowest number in more than two decades, according to the California Horse Racing Board’s annual report, published earlier this month.
Blood and urine samples from horses running in races at Maryland tracks will be tested by Truesdail Laboratories in Tustin, Calif, under a new 5-year deal that ended the state racing commission’s longtime relationship with a state testing lab.
