Jerry Dutton, who owned, trained, and bred Thoroughbreds for more than 60 years in California, died on Thursday in Idaho, Del Mar publicity officials said on Friday. Dutton was 87.
Dutton retired from training in 2006 and moved from California to Idaho with his wife, Barbara.
Jill Jellison, part of the second wave of successful female jockeys in Thoroughbred racing, died Tuesday of breast cancer in a Rhode Island hospital at the age of 51, according to family friends.
Racing primarily in New England, Jellison won 1,913 races in the U.S. and had total purse earnings of $13.6 million. Although she rode sparingly in the last decade, she rode well into her late 40s. In 1989, she won 241 races from 1,478 mounts with purse earnings of $1.12 million and took her first riding title, at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire.
Parx Racing has added five $150,000 stakes to its Fall Festival, where overnight purses at the Bensalem, Pa., track will average $500,000 a day.
Director of Racing Sam Elliott wanted to make sure Parx had a stakes each Saturday throughout the festival.
“The first stakes, which is for 3-year-olds and up, will be named after the winner of the previous year’s Pennsylvania Derby,” Elliott said. “This year’s will be the Bayern, and it will be run on Pennsylvania Derby Day, Sept. 19. The name of the race will change each year. We’re trying to start a little tradition.”
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Easily the most exciting moment at the 2015 Hastings meet came when Square Dancer won a $50,000 optional claimer in his first start here July 18. On paper, it looked like he might be able to finish third in the 1 1/16-mile race. However, after breaking sharply, jockey Richard Hamel made a quick and wise decision.
“I saw there were a couple of them gunning for the lead, so I decided to see ease him back,” Hamel said.
Edwin Moses, the two-time Olympic gold medal winner who now is chairman of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, will be one of two featured speakers at this year’s Jockey Club Round Table on Matters Pertaining to Racing on Aug. 9 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., The Jockey Club announced Friday.
The British-bred Casual Smile began her career in her native country but more recently has found a successful niche on the Jersey Shore. With the eyes of the racing world at Monmouth Park on Sunday, she’ll get a chance to score her first graded stakes victory in the Grade 3, $150,000 Matchmaker Stakes for fillies and mares on turf.
It has been 37 years since a horse made his first start since winning the Triple Crown. On Aug. 8, 1978, Affirmed went off at 1-20 in the Jim Dandy Stakes at Saratoga Race Course, two months after famously outdueling Alydar once again to win the Belmont Stakes under teenage riding sensation Steve Cauthen. According to the day’s charts, attendance at Saratoga that day was 21,544.
Jason Boulet, the racing secretary at Fair Grounds Race Course and Slots, has been promoted to senior director of racing and will oversee all aspects of Fair Grounds’s racing operations, the track announced Thursday.
Boulet will partially fill a role previously held by Howard “H” Withers, who was named general manager of racing at Fair Grounds in 2013. Withers is no longer part of the management team at the racetrack, Fair Grounds said in a release.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – In the third start of his summer form cycle last year, Sweet Luca became the only horse in 2014 to defeat champion sprinter Work All Week, handing him a 1 1/4-length defeat in the Addison Cammack Stakes for Illinois-bred sprinters. Three starts into his summer 2015 form cycle, Sweet Luca returns looking to repeat in the $50,000 Cammack, but this year he might face an obstacle even more formidable than Work All Week – a prevailing Polytrack bias that would work against his running style.
City of Weston will be returning to one of his preferred distances Saturday when he takes on fellow Grade 3 winner Falling Sky in the $75,000 Trinniberg at Gulfstream Park.
The race named for the champion sprinter of 2012 will be run over seven furlongs. Others set to start include Grande Shores, a stakes winner coming off a fourth-place finish in the Grade 2 Smile Sprint Handicap.
