ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Retired jockey Robert Landry and the late trainer Horatio Luro were among those inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame during a ceremony at the Mississauga Convention Center on Wednesday night.
Landry counted the 2004 Queen’s Plate on Niigon among his 2,045 wins, which also included memorable victories in the Grade 1 Alabama and the Grade 1 Woodbine Mile.
HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. -- Aurelia’s Belle had just won the Arlington Oaks on July 19, and her trainer, Wayne Catalano, walked slowly out of the winner’s circle and through the tunnel underneath the grandstand leading from the racetrack to Arlington’s paddock.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Attendance and handle figures were lower after the third weekend of the Del Mar summer meeting when compared to the same period in 2013, according to data released by the track.
Through Sunday, the 14th day of the 36-day meeting, average ontrack attendance was down 5.3 percent, from 19,542 in 2013 to 18,513 this year.
Don Grisham, a retired Daily Racing Form chart caller, correspondent, and columnist who later worked publicity for Oaklawn Park, died Monday morning from complications from a stroke, according to his wife, Iris. Grisham was 84.
Grisham suffered a stroke at his Hot Springs, Ark., home March 27 and, after a brief hospital stay, had been based at a rehabilitation center, where he died, said Iris Grisham. Don Grisham was with DRF for about 35 years, joining the organization as a call taker in Ohio in the late 1950s.
DEL MAR, Calif.- Trainer Shane Moran, who has not won a race with 23 starters in his career, has been fined $1,000 and suspended for 30 days in a stipulated agreement with the California Horse Racing Board stemming from a 2013 investigation regarding the welfare of some of the horses in his small stable, the stewards announced in a ruling on Sunday.
Two of the horses in Moran’s care in 2013 were found to be in such poor condition that they were later euthanized by a large animal veterinary clinic in El Cajon, Calif., according to a report by racing board investigators.
DEL MAR, Calif.- Kent Desormeaux, the leading rider at Del Mar, was fined $1,000 by track stewards on Sunday for failing a Breathalyzer test at Santa Anita on June 26 that led to him being removed from his mounts that day.
In a two-paragraph decision, stewards Scott Chaney, Luis Jauregui, and Kim Sawyer fined Desormeaux and stated that he must be evaluated by the Winners’ Foundation and following its recommendations, and must submit to a Breathalyzer test submitted by the California Horse Racing Board each racing day through Nov. 3.
Elisabeth Jerkens, the wife of Hall of Fame trainer Allen Jerkens and a Thoroughbred owner and breeder, died Sunday morning due to heart failure in a South Florida hospital. She was 86.
Elisabeth Jerkens bred horses for more than four decades, and one of her best was Spite the Devil, a New York-bred who won the Grade 3 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct in 2003 and was a two-time winner of the Evan Shipman Stakes in Saratoga and the Empire Classic at Belmont. He won 8 of 46 races and earned $849,512. She also bred and raced the New York-bred stakes-winning mare Becky’s Flute.
OPELOUSAS, La. – When the cats are away, Nieves will play.
With several of Evangeline’s top riders upstate at Louisiana Downs for Louisiana Cup Day, Emanuel Nieves had a big night Saturday, booting home five winners from eight mounts on the nine-race program.
“It’s my biggest day ever riding,” Nieves said, minutes after a furious stretch duel that saw him finish in a dead heat for the win with the favored Fantastical ($2.20) in the night’s seventh race. “I actually thought I won it outright. That horse wants to win and knows how to win.”
