ARCADIA, Calif. – Even while trainer Bob Baffert begins serving a 90-day suspension on Monday, immediate plans call for most of his horses to stay right where they are.

Sean McCarthy will train approximately 40 horses at Santa Anita, and oversee the training of approximately 35 more at Los Alamitos. Santa Anita-based trainer Tim Yakteen has already received a handful of Baffert runners, including graded winners Messier and Adare Manor. Kentucky-based Rodolphe Brisset, meanwhile, is the new trainer of stakes winner Blackadder.

With White Abarrio’s victory in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Florida Derby, trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. is assured of having one runner in this year’s Kentucky Derby. On Saturday, in the Grade 2, $750,000 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, Joseph will see if he can add to his roster for the May 7 Derby at Churchill Downs.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Cyberknife for the first time in his career has won back-to-back races, owing to his Arkansas Derby victory on Saturday, in which he earned a career-best Beyer Speed Figure of 92, and his trainer, Brad Cox, is hoping he’s got another forward move in him five weeks hence in the Kentucky Derby.

Greg Avioli has resigned as the president and chief executive officer of the Thoroughbred Owners of California, the organization announced Friday.

In a terse one-paragraph statement, the TOC said Avioli has left “to pursue other interests and ventures.”

Avioli did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

“TOC appreciates the contributions he has made to the organization and to the California Thoroughbred community as a whole and wishes him well in his future endeavors,” the statement read.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals on Friday declined to issue an emergency injunction that would have stayed a 90-day suspension handed down by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to trainer Bob Baffert, setting in motion the start of the penalty on Monday.

In an order signed by Judge Allison Jones, the court ruled that it did not find cause to issue the emergency injunction and said that the larger case appealing the commission’s decision to deny a stay would be “assigned to a three-judge panel of this court following expiration of the response time provided in the civil rules.”

Penn National Race Course in Grantville, Pa., has placed a lockdown on one of its barns after a horse that had been transferred to a medical facility tested positive for exposure to equine herpesvirus, a highly contagious disease, according to track officials.

Juan Silva, a trainer based in the Southwest for the past eight years, has been suspended 180 days by the stewards at Turf Paradise in Phoenix for “conducting business in a manner detrimental to the best interests of horse racing,” with the ruling being forwarded to the state’s racing commission under a recommendation that his license be revoked.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The fifth and final pool of the 2022 Kentucky Derby Future Wager, originally scheduled for this week, has been delayed by one week by Churchill Downs and now will run next Thursday (April 7) through Saturday (April 9).

A Wednesday press release from Churchill said the delay was “in the best interest of bettors,” pending the results of preps to be run this weekend as well as other factors, such as the status of several Derby candidates still to be determined.

John Swenson, a multi-talented journalist who counted Thoroughbred racing among his beats, died Monday at his home in Brooklyn after a long battle with cancer. He was 71.

The Brooklyn native covered racing and the New York Rangers for the wire services Reuters and United Press International, before working for the New York Post as a reporter and handicapper in the 1990s. He also worked as a free-lance correspondent for Daily Racing Form, covering Fair Grounds in New Orleans, where he also had a home.

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