Racing Hall of Fame champion and dual classic winner Silver Charm will return to North America after nearly a decade in Japan to live out his life at the Old Friends Thoroughbred retirement facility in Georgetown, Ky,, it was announced Wednesday by Three Chimneys Farm and Old Friends.

LGC Sciences, the Lexington, Ky., drug-testing laboratory that has been a source of frustration for three major racing jurisdictions this year, is confident it can address a backlog of incomplete tests by the end of 2014 and restore its reputation, the managing director of the lab’s parent company said Tuesday.

Hardest Core’s out-of-the-blue win in the Arlington Million was the feel-good story of the summer. A little-known horse – owned, trained, and ridden by obscure connections – takes on the big guys and wins a $1 million race, defeating the reigning Breeders’ Cup Turf champ, Magician, fair and square.

Now things get a bit sticky. Hardest Core is preparing for an even greater challenge, the $3 million Breeders’ Cup Turf. Was the Million a fluke, or is Hardest Core for real?

ARCADIA, Calif. – There have been some real fish tales told on the annual Alaska fishing trip trainers Alan Sherman, Eoin Harty, and Sean McCarthy take each summer, but imagine the tales that will be told if one of them lands the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday at Santa Anita.

Sherman is the top assistant for California Chrome, who is trained by his father, Art. Harty has Footbridge, and McCarthy has Majestic Harbor. Their three horses are among the 14 scheduled to run on the $5 million Classic.

ELMONT, N.Y. – Michelle Nevin always thought that one day she would go out on her own and be a trainer. Just not the day, or in the way, that it happened.

On Jan. 24, 2013, after exhausting his legal appeals, trainer Richard Dutrow Jr. – for whom Nevin worked for more than a decade – began serving a 10-year suspension handed him by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board. It left Nevin in charge of more than 65 horses stabled between New York and south Florida.

ARCADIA, Calif. – If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

First, Mother Nature wreaked havoc on the training schedules for New York-based horsemen. Now, a plane malfunction has delayed the shipping of horses based in New York and Kentucky for this week’s Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita.

On Monday morning, the Tex Sutton plane was still in Lexington, Ky., undergoing a repair for a cracked windshield. The plane was scheduled to leave New York at 9 a.m. and bring about 16 horses for trainers Chad Brown and Bill Mott as well one for a Canadian-based trainer.

The long-term future of Aqueduct is uncertain, one likely to be determined a year from now by a governor who has already expressed an interest in finding another use for the part of the 210-acre property that isn’t occupied by Resorts World New York, the wildly successful video-lottery-terminal facility that marks its three-year anniversary Thursday.

Horses who have been transferred to assistants of trainers who are serving suspensions for serious drug infractions will not be able to run in the Breeders’ Cup races as of next year, according to a rule approved by the Breeders’ Cup board of directors.

The total live mutuel handle showed solid gains at the 2014 Northlands Park meet that concluded Saturday. Despite racing five fewer days than in 2013, the total handle for the 73-day meet was up 11.9 percent at $20,070,669, compared with the $17,940,141 that was wagered over 78 days last year.

The all-sources daily average of $274,940 was up 19.5 percent, and the ontrack average, $85,742, was also significantly higher at 11.3 percent.

Grade 1 winner Capo Bastone has been withdrawn from Breeders' Cup consideration and retired due to filling in his left front ankle.

The 4-year-old son of Street Boss, who raced for Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, was among the pre-entries for the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile. He is scheduled to be sold as a stallion prospect at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall selected mixed sale Nov. 3 in Lexington, Ky.