Penn barring Gill horses pending review

Penn National Race Course is continuing to refuse to permit horses owned by Michael Gill to race, pending results of the necropsies that have been performed on two Gill-owned horses who broke down last week at the Grantville, Pa., track.

"Until we have a meeting to review those results and have a chance to talk to Mr. Gill about them, we are declining to accept entries of his horses," Chris McErlean, vice president of racing at Penn, said Wednesday. "I would expect that meeting to happen before this week is out."

Gill, the New Hampshire-based mortgage broker who won the Eclipse Award for top owner in 2005 and led all North American owners in wins last year, has had at least six horses sustain catastrophic injuries at Penn since Oct. 1. The situation came to a head Saturday night when Penn jockeys refused to ride after the fifth race, when the Gill-owned Laughing Moon broke down shortly after the wire. It was only after the one remaining Gill horse on the card was scratched that the jockeys agreed to continue riding.

Meanwhile, trainer Darrel Delahoussaye, who trained a sizable string of horses for Gill at Penn but no longer works for him, disputes Gill's version of how they parted ways. Gill said Monday that Penn "wanted me to give Darrel up to keep my stalls," but Delahoussaye said in an e-mail to Daily Racing Form that he spoke Sunday morning to Gill and told him he was going out on his own "because of all the controversy."

Likewise, said McErlean, "in no way did Penn make any such demands" for Delahoussaye to be fired so that Gill could retain the 49 stalls he currently has at the track.