La Verdad, among the leading filly and mare sprinters in the country, was disqualified from her victory in the Grade 2 Honorable Miss at Saratoga, and her trainer, Linda Rice, will serve a 15-day suspension as a result of the horse testing positive for clenbuterol, New York racing regulators announced on Saturday.

CYPRESS, Calif. – Workouts are starting to get serious for California Chrome, the 2014 Horse of the Year.

On Saturday at Los Alamitos, California Chrome worked a half-mile in 50.20 seconds, his longest and most significant workout since returning to training last month after a three-month break.

Ridden by exercise rider Dihigi Gladney, California Chrome, the 2014 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, was one of the first horses on the track shortly after training began at 5:30 a.m.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Jockeys Sebastian Saez and Sophie Doyle escaped serious injuries in a fifth race spill at Churchill Downs on Thursday that left Saez with a broken collarbone and Doyle with bruising and soreness, their agents said.

On Wednesday, the West Virginia Racing Commission approved the statutory minimum of racing dates for both Charles Town Races and Mountaineer Park next year, but both tracks plan to file amended applications that would cut at least 100 dates total from the state’s live racing schedule.

Don LaPlace, a former jockey who exercised champions Stymie and Shuvee and an employee of the New York Racing Association for parts of five decades, died Wednesday at his home in Schuylerville, N.Y. He was 85.

LaPlace, a native of Brooklyn, worked as a jockey for about a decade, riding his first winner in 1949 at Narragansett Park in Rhode Island. LaPlace would be the leading apprentice at Jamaica Racetrack.

Though he never won any major stakes, LaPlace did gallop Stymie and was the regular exercise rider for Shuvee, trained by Mike Freeman.

There’s no question that the 4-year-old gelding Leathers Slappin isn’t much of a racehorse. He’s 2 for 26 lifetime and has lost 15 straight. But put him in against a bunch of maiden fillies and mares, and Leathers Slappin can look like a champion.

An attorney for Maria Borell, the listed trainer for the horse Runhappy when he won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint on Saturday, has sent letters to the horse’s connections seeking compensation for her role in handling the colt, according to the attorney she has hired.

The final hour of the three-hour Breeders’ Cup telecast on NBC received a 2.6 household rating and a 6 share, according to NBC, the highest rating for any portion of a Breeders’ Cup telecast since 1995.

The 2.6 rating for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, which featured the final performance by Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, was up 53 percent compared with the rating for the Breeders’ Cup Classic last year. The Classic this year went off at approximately 6 p.m. Eastern, whereas last year’s Classic went off in prime time.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association has joined a group pressing for federal legislation that would give the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency the authority to devise and enforce national medication policies, but the organization also will press for significant changes to the current bill, the group said on Monday.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – While American Pharoah already had wrapped up 2015 Eclipse Awards as both Horse of the Year and champion 3-year-old male before the gate opened for the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday, his emphatic victory provided just the right exclamation point to his year.

But what of the other divisions? That’s what the Breeders’ Cup was designed to clarify, and for the most part it did its job Friday and Saturday at Keeneland, leaving only a handful of divisions still to be debated before ballots go out to Eclipse Award voters next month.