Paco Lopez, the jockey who was provisionally suspended on Wednesday, one day after he struck a horse with a whip after a race, has announced that he will take time off from riding “to seek appropriate counseling and work on myself,” the rider said in a social media post on Thursday.
Aqueduct has canceled its Thursday card due to forecasted high winds scheduled to impact the New York City area, the New York Racing Association announced.
The National Weather Service is calling for sustained high winds Thursday with gusts approaching 50 miles per hour. As of Thursday morning, the New York City area was under a high wind advisory.
Aqueduct was to remain open for simulcasting and live racing was scheduled to resume Friday with an eight-race card beginning at 12:10 p.m.
The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority has issued a provisional suspension of the jockey Paco Lopez after video showed him whipping a horse in the neck after the fifth race at Park Racing outside of Philadelphia on Tuesday.
In the video, Lopez can be seen high in the stirrups while slowing a horse, the 2-year-old colt National Law, before heading back to the winner’s circle. He suddenly raises the whip high over his shoulder and brings the cord of the whip down on the right side of the horse’s neck.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. -- The New York Racing Association has scheduled 200 racing dates in 2025, 49 of which will take place at Saratoga.
The 200 dates are five more than were scheduled in 2024.
Aqueduct’s winter meet will consist of 49 programs from Jan. 1 through March 30. Aside from a card on New Year’s Day, which falls on a Wednesday, racing for the most part will be conducted four days a week (Thursdays through Sundays) in January and February. Starting March 7, there will be three-day race weeks, Fridays through Sundays, through the end of the month.
Dale Romans, the Kentucky native who has served on the board of the Kentucky Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association for more than 30 years, has been elected president of the organization, taking a position that has been held by trainer Rick Hiles for 24 years.
Barnes, a first-out winner from the barn of Triple Crown titan Bob Baffert, was made the 13-1 individual favorite in the second Kentucky Derby pool, behind the perennial top choice in the early pools, the field entry, which closed at 9-5.
Barnes, a $3.2 million 2-year-old purchase, won his debut at Churchill Downs on Nov. 27 by a head. It was the first win by a Baffert-trained horse at Churchill since he was banned by the track shortly after the 2021 Kentucky Derby. The ban was lifted this summer. Baffert has won the Derby a record six times.
Trainer Jonathan Thomas had the best week of his career in California in late November, winning three graded stakes on turf at Del Mar.
The victories are a prelude for his second full-time winter in California in coming months at Santa Anita.
Last winter, Thomas won two races from 22 runners at Santa Anita, but did not win a stakes. Expectations are much higher this time.
DEL MAR, Calif. - With his third consecutive stakes win since mid-July, Formidable Man confirmed his status as the dominant 3-year-old turf male in California with an appealing win in Saturday’s Grade 1 Hollywood Derby at Del Mar.
The latest victory may lead to a first career start against older horses at Gulfstream Park, in the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup Turf on Jan. 25.
“Might have to think about the Pegasus,” trainer Michael McCarthy wrote in a text message on Sunday morning.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - When determining in which Breeders’ Cup race to run, the connections of Mullikin chose to cut the Grade 1 winner back to the six furlongs of the Sprint rather than stretch out to the Dirt Mile which, at Del Mar, was contested around two turns.
Coming off four straight victories, including a Grade 1 win in the seven-furlong Forego at Saratoga in August, Mullikin was sent off the 3-1 favorite in the $2 million Sprint. He finished third, three lengths behind Straight No Chaser.
Horses from Aqueduct to Del Mar have descended on Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., for the 65-date meet that opens Friday.
The season runs through Kentucky Derby Day, May 3.
Oaklawn drew the card for its opener the day after Thanksgiving and a swath of racing jurisdictions are represented among the 112 horses that were entered in 10 races. The first round of horses entered last raced on a variety of circuits - in 13 different states - coming from as far away as New York City and Southern California.
