CYPRESS, Calif. – Ed Burgart, the most recognized voice in Quarter Horse racing, is retiring next summer.
Burgart said on Friday that he plans to call the races at Los Alamitos through next June. He said the timing of his retirement will coincide with his 66th birthday. Burgart said he has considered retirement in the last year and wanted to close his career on a high note.
“I didn’t want to wait until I was making a lot of mistakes,” he said. “I wanted to continue while I was still sharp.”
Tinners Way, a multiple Grade 1-winning son of Secretariat, was euthanized Wednesday at Old Friends in Georgetown, Ky., following the acute onset of severe neurologic disease. The pensioned stallion was 27.
Tinners Way had been treated in the past for equine protozoal myeloencephalitis, a disease affecting the central nervous system, Old Friends resident veterinarian Bryan Waldridge said, “and he did have some lingering neurologic effects from a previous infection.”
Robert “Bobby” Donato, the first trainer to win a graded stakes race with the legendary John Henry and to run the gelding on the turf, died Saturday of complications from back surgery in Lexington, Ky. He was 79.
In his mid-20s, Donato was injured on the job as a police officer in his native Philadelphia before turning to the racetrack, where he became an assistant to Joe Pierce Jr. in New Jersey and Florida in the 1960s. He eventually went out on his own and was hired by Sam Rubin to train the newly purchased John Henry in April of the gelding’s 3-year-old year.
ARCADIA, Calif.-There is a massive pick six carryover of $536,918 for Tuesday at Santa Anita, the final day of the spring-summer meeting when the pool must be distributed.
Officially, there is a carryover of $126,038 in the main pool and $410,879 in the single ticket jackpot pool, but since both pools must be paid on the final day of the meeting the pick six carryover is the sum of the two segments.
If there are no winners in the pick six, the entire pool will be distributed to tickets with five winners.
A federal court jury in Harrisburg, Pa., convicted trainer Murray Rojas of 14 charges in a decision reached late Friday night.
Rojas, 51, was acquitted on seven charges of wire fraud but convicted of misbranding medications and of criminal conspiracy. Rojas was charged and convicted of administering medications to horses she started at Penn National that are not permitted within 24 hours of racing. With the help of four veterinarians, she then backdated records of the drug administrations to obscure the fact that the medications had been given inside the 24-hour window.
Stewards at Charles Town Races on Wednesday ordered a horse who was coming off a 6 1/2-year layoff to be scratched from a Thursday claiming race, despite the horse meeting West Virginia’s conditions of eligibility and the owner’s insistence that the horse was sound, according to stewards and the horse’s connections.
Breeders’ Cup Turf winner Better Talk Now was euthanized Tuesday evening at New Bolton Center in Pennsylvania due to complications following colic surgery. The Talkin Man gelding was 18.
Better Talk Now had been at New Bolton since June 7, when he underwent an initial colic surgery. On June 15, it was announced that complications had required a second surgery.
“He displayed the same toughness fighting his final battle as he did when showing his special talents on the track that won him so many fans in the racing world,” co-owner Brent Johnson said in a statement.
Owner Dutch Masters III, jockey James Lackey, trainer Bubba Werner, and Quarter Horse champion Heartswideopen were inducted into the Ruidoso Downs Hall of Fame on Friday night in New Mexico.
Dutch Masters III has bred and owned the Quarter Horse champions Four Forty Blast, Secret Card, and Higher Fire, according to Ruidoso. Lackey won 13 Grade 1 stakes, including two runnings of the Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos. He regularly teamed with world champion Quarter Horse First Down Dash.
Were Upset not part of the foal crop of 1917, it is entirely possible that he would be far more than a footnote in racing history. Instead, he is mostly forgotten other than for the false notion that his name is the inspiration for the word describing an unlikely event, most often used in the context of sports.
Nik Goodwin rode his 1,000th Thoroughbred winner Thursday night at Canterbury Park when he booted home Saganaga for trainer Gary Scherer in the sixth race.
Goodwin, who has been riding at Canterbury regularly since 2006, also has ridden well over 100 Quarter Horse winners.
