Brad Cox was hoping history would repeat itself when he brought Juju’s Map to California for the Breeders’ Cup.
It was in 2019 that Cox brought British Idiom, the winner of the Grade 1 Darley Alcibiades, to clinch a divisional Eclipse Award by capturing the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita. So when Juju’s Map won the 2021 Alcibiades at Keeneland, hope was alive for another divisional Eclipse.
They say nobody’s perfect, but maybe they hadn’t seen Echo Zulu yet. The bay filly was untouchable in 2021, dominating all four of her races in a season of true perfection.
Trained by Steve Asmussen, Echo Zulu capped off a brilliant 2-year-old campaign with a 5 1/4-length victory in the Nov. 5 Net Jets Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Del Mar. It was a signature triumph that has made her an overwhelming favorite to be voted the Eclipse Award in this division.
The 2022 fall meet at Belmont Park on Long Island may be moved to Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park in Queens, as a result of planned construction work at Belmont after the track’s summer meet closes, officials for the New York Racing Association told a state regulatory board on Friday.
In 2021, Danjer won stakes at five venues in a seven-race tour throughout the Midwest and New Mexico, a consistent campaign that gave the gelding the title of World Champion Quarter Horse.
Racing for the partnership of Billy Smith, Pat Guthrie, and trainer Dean Frey, Danjer was honored in a ceremony at the Heritage Place Sales company in Oklahoma City on Wednesday evening.
Now a 6-year-old, Danjer also earned titles for champion aged gelding and overall aged horse for 2021, titles he also won in 2020.
Attorneys for Bob Baffert have sent a draft lawsuit to Churchill Downs laying out a legal challenge to the company’s decision to ban the trainer from the Kentucky Derby through 2023, according to a report in The New York Times.
The draft complaint contends that Churchill Downs has violated the trainer’s due-process rights, according to the Times, a common tactic employed by trainers fighting exclusions from racetrack properties. Results from cases in the past arguing the same denial of due-process rights from private companies have a mixed record of success and failure.
Danny Gargan, a New York-based trainer, has been ordered by a federal court to pay $132,000 in back wages and damages to 52 grooms and hotwalkers for failing to pay the workers overtime wages they earned, according to a consent order the trainer signed with the U.S. Department of Labor.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Irad Ortiz Jr. has taken off all mounts Saturday and Sunday at Gulfstream Park with a sore knee, a minor injury the star jockey suffered Friday in a starting-gate mishap. It is not expected to sideline him beyond this weekend.
His agent, Steve Rushing, said Saturday morning that Ortiz definitely intends to be back riding when Gulfstream resumes action Wednesday.
Laurel Park in Maryland canceled all racing and training this weekend, citing “ongoing track maintenance and inclement weather predicted for Sunday,” according to a statement released on Friday afternoon.
The cancellation of the Saturday and Sunday live race cards will cap a week in which the track had already called off live racing on Thursday and Friday. The Thursday card was canceled because of the “lingering effects of a winter storm” that hit the mid-Atlantic earlier in the week. A second winter storm brought snowfall on Friday morning.
Michael Kegley Jr., a former sales representative for the Kentucky compounding pharmacy Medivet, was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Thursday by a federal judge in New York, according to court documents, the latest in a string of sentences handed down to individuals connected to racing who were indicted nearly two years ago.
The California Horse Racing Board has removed its equine medical director from oversight duties of the ongoing necropsy of 2021 Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit, citing a temporary suspension issued by the California Veterinary Medical Board.
