Roy and Gretchen Jackson are excited about running Lexington Stakes winner Divining Rod in the Preakness next Saturday. They believe he is coming to hand at the right time and deserves an opportunity to face the best of his age group in the second leg of the Triple Crown.
The Jacksons are also aware that their Preakness participation will stir up memories – both for themselves and the public – of Barbaro, the 2006 Kentucky Derby and Florida Derby winner, whom they bred and raced.
Trainer Kellyn Gorder has been granted a stay of a 14-month suspension for two Kentucky rules violations and will be free to start horses until an appeal of the ruling is heard, according to Kentucky chief state steward Barbara Borden.
Gorder appealed the suspension shortly after it was handed down in late April, Borden said. A hearing on the appeal has not been scheduled, Borden said.
The 57th Assiniboia Downs season kicks off Sunday, beginning a 50-day meet through Sept. 7.
Racing on the unique 1 3/16-mile dirt track in Winnipeg will be conducted on Wednesdays (beginning May 27), Fridays, Saturdays, holidays, and some Sundays. Post time is 7 p.m. Central, except for holidays and select Sundays, when first post is 1:30 p.m.
The centerpiece of the meet is the $75,000 Manitoba Derby for 3-year-olds on Aug. 3, a program that also features the $25,000 Manitoba Oaks for 3-year-old fillies.
Trials for the $1.1 million Heritage Place Futurity for Quarter Horses at Remington Park have been moved to Monday and Tuesday after a number of tornadoes touched down in the Oklahoma City area overnight Wednesday.
Remington was to have run 24 trials for its richest race of the meet over Friday night and Saturday night, but the races are being moved due to the prospect of more inclement weather that could impact all of the trials being run on the originally scheduled programs, said Tim Williams, racing secretary for the Quarter Horse meet at Remington.
Five days after his victory in the Kentucky Derby, American Pharoah returned to the track for training on Thursday morning at Churchill Downs as he began the quick turnaround for the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico on May 16.
American Pharoah was joined by his Bob Baffert-trained stablemate Dortmund, who finished third in the Derby and is also under consideration for the Preakness.
California Chrome, the 2014 Horse of the Year, is scheduled to have a workout at Newmarket Racecourse in England on Saturday under jockey Frankie Dettori in preparation for the Group 1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot in June, trainer Art Sherman said on Wednesday.
There is a possibility that Dettori could ride California Chrome in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes.
Sherman said he was “not 100 percent sure” whether regular rider Victor Espinoza or Dettori will ride California Chrome next month.
“We could go with someone who knows the course,” he said.
For the first time since he finished second to American Pharoah in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, Firing Line got to run around the track at Churchill Downs. Firing Line merely jogged Wednesday, and he was scheduled to jog again Thursday after doing nothing more strenuous than walking Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The routine coming out of a race will feel normal for Firing Line.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Neil French refuses to miss a race at Santa Anita these days. From a stakes to a modest maiden claimer, French wants to see it all.
“I don’t want to stay home,” he said on a recent morning. “I’ve been going every day.”
Year-round racing four days a week might be monotonous to some, but for French, who has trained in Southern California since the 1970s, all racing is appreciated right now.
Vincent Powers, a jockey for both the flat and steeplechase who went on to become a champion trainer, and Billy Kelly, a Thoroughbred who won 39 races from 69 starts in the early 20th century, have been elected to the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame, the Hall announced on Wednesday.
The two were elected by the Hall’s Historic Review Committee. They will be inducted into the Hall of Fame during a ceremony Aug. 7 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where the Hall is located, as part of the roster of inductees that includes contemporary horses, trainers, and jockeys.
Elwood Johnston, a second-generation Thoroughbred breeder who bred and raced Acclamation, the Eclipse Award winner as the champion older male of 2011, died in his sleep on Tuesday, according to a statement released by the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association.
Johnston, who was best known in racing by his nickname, “Bud,” was 77. His 78th birthday would have been Wednesday.
