Hazel Park Raceway will expand its 2017 meet by four days, which moves closing day to Sept. 18 and brings the total number of race dates for the season to 40.
The supplemental dates will deviate from the regular schedule, running Sundays and Mondays, Sept. 10-11 and Sept. 17-18. Sundays will feature an earlier 4:30 p.m. Eastern post time, while Monday cards will start at the normal 7:20 p.m. Hazel Park normally hosts night cards on Fridays and Saturdays.
Valid was an important horse early in the career of jockey Nik Juarez. Now, Juarez is paying Valid back by providing him with a good retirement.
Juarez, 24, won his first career stakes on Valid in the Grade 3 Iselin at Monmouth Park in 2015. Later that year, trainer Marcus Vitali and owner Carolyn Vogel let Juarez ride Valid in the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile at Keeneland. They finished fifth.
The Rainbow 6 jackpot at Gulfstream Park was solved on Saturday by one lucky fan who collected $259,573 for having the only winning ticket on the six-race sequence. And he did it for an investment of only $10.
According to officials at NYRA Bets, the winning ticket was purchased at Longshots, the simulcast facility at Aqueduct. A NYRA Bets spokesman said the winner, who remains anonymous, purchased three tickets, one for $6, a second for $3.60, and a third, which had the winning combination, for a mere 40 cents.
The Stronach Group has sold four shares so far for the second running of the Pegasus Stakes scheduled for late January at the company’s Gulfstream Park in South Florida, according to an official at the company, in stark contrast to last year at this time, when all 12 slots in the race had already been bought.
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Phillip Dutton has long been an advocate of off-the-track Thoroughbreds for competition in eventing, which tests a horse’s athleticism, versatility, stamina, and courage through tests in dressage, cross-country, and stadium jumping.
That love for the breed, along with skill in the sport, runs in the family.
Dutton's teenage daughter Olivia recently rode one of the stable’s most familiar names, classic-placed Icabad Crane, to victory in the Junior Open Training division at Fair Hill International's August horse trials.
Patrick Biancone, the veteran trainer who served a one-year suspension after three vials of cobra venom were found in a tack room in his Keeneland barn in June 2007, was granted a conditional license to train in Kentucky during a Tuesday meeting of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission in Lexington, Ky.
The license comes with the stipulation that if Biancone incurs certain medication violations or is found to have falsified his license application in Kentucky or any other jurisdiction, the license will be revoked, following due process.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – The Jockey Club is doubling down on its support for legislation that would put in place a federal framework for the sport’s regulation of medication and drug testing, and it will do so without the support of large horsemen’s associations, according to comments made during the organization’s Round Table Conference on Matters Pertaining to Racing on Sunday in Saratoga Springs.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Champion sprinter Drefong worked a half-mile from the gate Saturday morning at Del Mar, a move that trainer Bob Baffert said was done to get him off the starter’s list following his disastrous run in the Grade 1 Bing Crosby on July 29, when he ducked in soon after the start and dislodged jockey Mike Smith.
Baffert said the work - a half-mile in 48.80 seconds - went as planned and that Drefong was on course to race in the Grade 1, $600,000 Forego Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 26.
Suffolk Downs in East Boston, Mass., has added two dates to its racing calendar this year following an agreement between the track and a local horsemen’s group to use money from uncashed tickets to cover a portion of the expenses, according to officials in the state.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission approved the plan on Thursday and authorized the use of $800,000 from the state’s Race Horse Development Fund for purses for the two days, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. Suffolk has run four dates this year and has plans to run two dates over Sept. 2-3.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill – A friend and colleague from back home in Argentina came to see Ignacio Correas in New York during 2002. The September before, Correas had left Argentina with his wife and two children. His friend could hardly believe the man before him.
“I had lost weight, from 165 to 128,” Correas said. “I started working 3:30 in the morning and I would leave at 5:30 in the evening every day. He said, ‘You you need to go home! What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I’m going to do good!’ and he said. ‘You’re not doing good. You’re doing terrible.’ ”
