Trainer Graham Motion sent out his 2,000th winner in North America on Tuesday, when Rachel Wall won the seventh race at Delaware Park.
Motion went out on his own as a trainer in 1993 with a small stable. He was helped out at the barn by his wife, Anita, and Adrian Rolls, who remains his assistant. From those humble beginnings, Motion steadily built his outfit, which today has approximately 100 employees and 140 horses. Motion has career purse earnings of more than $93 million.
Daily average handle at the 37-day Pimlico spring meet increased 9.7 percent, according to figures released by the Maryland Jockey Club on Monday.
Pimlico betting averaged almost $5.2 million per day, up from just over $4.7 million a year ago. The figures include the Preakness and Black-Eyed Susan cards, which are dramatically higher than the other days of the meet.
Total handle at the meet was up 25.5 percent to $207.1 million, as Pimlico raced two more days this year than in 2014.
Ogden Mills “Dinny” Phipps, the highly influential owner and breeder, will step down as chairman of The Jockey Club on Aug. 8 after leading the organization for 32 years, the group announced Monday.
Phipps, 74, has been chairman of The Jockey Club since 1983, the longest tenure for a chairman at the organization. He has presided over the organization as it expanded from its traditional role of maintaining the stud book for the U.S. Thoroughbred industry to a massive, multifaceted business with a hand in nearly every aspect of the industry.
Apprentice David Lopez, fourth in the Golden Gate Fields riders’ standings with 70 wins, will be sidelined four to six weeks with fractures in his lower back.
Lopez was injured after falling when his mount in Saturday’s 10th race, Redneck Girl, ducked in sharply shortly after the start of the race.
Lopez was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif., for precautionary X-rays that revealed fractures in vertebrae Nos. 1, 2, and 3, according to Golden Gate track physician David Seftel.
The overnight rating for NBC’s Belmont Stakes broadcast Saturday was a 12.3, down 5 percent from the 12.9 overnight rating posted for last year’s broadcast, according to figures released by the network Sunday.
Share for the nearly three-hour broadcast was a 27, NBC said. Share measures the percentage of people watching television who are tuned to a specific program. The 12.7 rating was the third highest for a Belmont broadcast in the modern era, behind last year’s figure and a 15.9 posted for the 2004 broadcast, featuring Smarty Jones.
All-sources handle on Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, which featured the first Triple Crown triumph in 37 years, was down 10.5 percent from the record-setting handle on the Belmont last year, when California Chrome failed in his own attempt to win the Triple Crown, according to charts of the race.
Total handle on the Belmont was $82.4 million, according to the chart, including all horizontal wagers that paid off on the race. The handle last year on the Belmont was $92.2 million, which had beat the previous record, set in 2004, by more than $24 million.
ELMONT, N.Y. – After three failed attempts at winning the Triple Crown, trainer Bob Baffert could have been excused if he talked about how great an accomplishment American Pharoah’s Triple Crown sweep felt for him personally.
Instead, following American Pharoah’s 5 1/2-length tour-de-force victory in Saturday’s $1.5 million Belmont Stakes before a raucous crowd of 90,000 on a glorious spring afternoon on Long Island, the 62-year-old Baffert mentioned just about everybody else. There were his parents, Ellie and Bill, both of whom died within the last three years.
The Rainbow 6 mandatory payout Saturday at Pimlico resulted in a payoff of $12,518 for a 10-cent wager to multiple ticketolders.
There was a carryover of $275,321 coming into the final card. Normally, the jackpot is only paid out when there is a single winning ticket, but as today was closing day of the Pimlico meet, a mandatory payout was in effect regardless of how many winning tickets were sold.
An additional $798,205 was bet into the pool Saturday.
Twelve horses have won the American Triple Crown – composed of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes – which was patterned after the English Triple Crown that dates to 1809. When Sir Barton won the three races in 1919, it was not considered a Triple Crown feat. The three races were not acknowledged as being tied together as the Triple Crown until the 1930s.
