The Maryland Jockey Club has committed an additional $875,000 to stakes purses this spring at Pimlico and created a new $100,000 bonus for trainers who run horses in the 15 stakes on Preakness weekend.
The changes, along with the complete 2014 Pimlico stakes schedule, were announced Tuesday after formal approval was granted by the Maryland Racing Commission.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The pick six paid $65,197 to 12 ticketholders at Santa Anita on Monday after interest in the bet soared following a one-day carryover of $119,278.
Bettors added $1,230,230 to the pool on Monday.
Beginning in the fourth race, the winners of Monday’s pick six races were Toledo Eddie ($7), Vanlose Stairway ($52.40), Hearitforthegirls ($14.60), Pontchatrain ($7), Rovenna ($4.80), and Dixieland Blues ($12.20)
Only Rovenna was favored. Toledo Eddie and Pontchatrain were the second betting choices.
Looking for a price in this Grade 3, $250,000 General George Handicap, and one horse who fits the bill is JAVERRE (#8). He won this race last year, at just under 7-1, but he'll be a much bigger price than that today, coming off a couple of sub-par Beyers. Handicappers willing to overlook those running lines, however, will like him based on his back form.
Corey Nakatani will ride Withers Stakes runner-up Uncle Sigh in the Grade 3, $500,000 Gotham Stakes on March 1 at Aqueduct, replacing Pablo Morales, trainer Gary Contessa said Saturday.
Contessa said the decision, made in tandem with owner Chip McEwen - who races under the moniker Wounded Warrior Stable - was to go with a more experienced rider and was “no knock whatsoever on Pablo Morales,” Contessa added.
[ROAD TO THE KENTUCKY DERBY: Prep races, point standings, replays]
Two barns at Parx Racing have been placed under quarantine after one horse tested positive for the equine herpesvirus, the second time in four months that Parx has had to institute a quarantine due to that virus.
Horses will not be allowed to ship into or out of Parx for a 21-day period, according to racing secretary Sal Sinatra. The New York Racing Association announced Saturday that it will not permit horses to ship in from Parx or allow horses to ship to Parx until the quarantine is lifted.
“I can’t let anybody off the grounds until this is over,” Sinatra said.
The long cold lonely winter continued for tracks in the Northeast as Aqueduct and Laurel both canceled live racing Saturday with more snow on the way following a pair of storms earlier in the week.
Previously, it had been announced that Penn National, Charles Town, and Turfway Park had canceled their Saturday programs.
After getting battered with nearly a foot of snow Thursday into Friday, another two to four inches was forecast for Saturday in the New York area, beginning shortly after 11 a.m. That same storm was also expected to impact Laurel in Maryland.
For the 11-furlong distance, there seems to be plenty of pace in this renewal of the The Very One, especially with a few of these fillies and mares returning from layoffs of varying lengths. That may or may not mean a late-kicker will prevail, but it does mean the pace should be honest.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Hastings-based trainer Melanie Walters died Thursday as a result of injuries received in a training accident at her parent’s farm in Langley, British Columbia.
Walters, 37, was coming off a strong year at Hastings, where she finished in the top 10 in the trainer standings with 15 wins from 58 starts. It was Walters’s second year as a trainer. Her main client was her father, Dr. Ken Walters, a prominent horse owner at Hastings for many years.
Oil Capital Race Venture Inc., the group that leased and operated Mount Pleasant Meadows in central Michigan, voluntarily surrendered its 2014 mixed-breed racing license and simulcast permit in a letter to the Michigan Gaming Control Board on Wednesday.
The action came after the track ceased simulcast operations on Feb. 8, when an investment group of Michigan horsemen pulled its funding to the track, which was being used to maintain simulcast functions over the winter.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Don Brumfield has a deadpan expression. Does he wear anything else? The man who has pretty much seen and done it all in horse racing is the antithesis of excitable, although his solemn demeanor might only be a façade.
“I feel very, very lucky that I’ve gotten to do as much as I have in this game,” Brumfield said in a recent interview at his Gulfstream Park stewards’ office. “I can’t think of a better place to spend your life than the racetrack.”
